The Batlord

The Obsessed: Incarnate - 1999

If you dig Saint Vitus, then you're probably aware of their singer Scott "Wino" Weinrich. The Obsessed were his doom metal band before that, and after too, since he reformed them when he left Saint Vitus. At least that's what I'm pretty sure the history is. I've heard a song or two from them, but never really got into them. They're pretty ****ing cool though. Apparently they actually evolved out of the DC punk scene from the late seventies/early eighties. The combination of punk and Sabbath influences naturally leads to accidental stoner metal. This band is plenty heavy, but they play much more mid-paced than Saint Vitus, with a raw energy that's pretty engaging. Wino's raspy vocals are an acquired taste for many, but I've always liked him. Like a less abrasive, more world-weary Lemmy.

This isn't an actual album. It's one of those compilations full of B-sides, demos, and unreleased tracks. As such, this isn't an "Oh, my God! Brilliant!" album, but there is some quality **** on here. "Streetside" and a cover of the Animals' "Looking Inside Out" are particularly badass. Any fan of doom should definitely check these dudes out if they haven't already.

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The Batlord

First of all, this was first released by some label called "Bad Acid Records", which only seems to have released four other recordings, one of which was a CD version of this album as the first was only 12" vinyl, so I'm assuming it was just some ****ty basement label or something that couldn't distribute poop.

I really shouldn't have to say anything about Electric Wizard, but if you're a total fleeb and don't know who they are, they're Sabbath x1000. If that's not helpful then I don't care. This is an overlooked piece of history merely because it was an EP, but it was released between Come My Fanatics and Dopethrone, right smack dab in the middle of their classic period, and it's as amazing as anything else they've ever done. No less a person than Jus Osbourne himself has declared the title track to be the definitive Electric Wizard song. Whether or not you agree, it sums up the band as much as any other song does: tar-thick walls of guitar distortion, psychedelic trippiness, and who really cares what else. If you dig the Wiz (not a thing), and you haven't heard this record, then please correct this oversight. Oh, and even though it's an EP, and even though there are only two songs, it's still over thirty minutes long, which is a full-size album for many bands. So this isn't just fifteen minutes of extra stuff you can afford to ignore.

This is also a great indicator of just how much you should pay attention to Southern Lord. Four records in and we already have Electric Wizard. Soon to come are Church of Misery, Goatsnake, Boris, Sunn 0))), Cathedral, Pentagram, Khanate, and that's just scratching the surface. So this is a pretty historic label.

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Unknown Soldier

I recently sent a message to The Batlord about this thread, saying how good it was blah blah blah and the dork sent a message back saying he had no idea what I was talking about and said the thread didn't exist (or words more or less to this effect) anyway here is the non-existent thread to enjoy

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Metal Wars

Power Metal

Pounding Decibels- A Hard and Heavy History

Trollheart

How could he forget about this? I used to love this!
Petition to bring back this thread!

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

The Batlord

I remember this thread. You just called it a metal thread, which this isn't, so I was confused which one you were talking about. The only straight-up metal thread, other than my Batcave journal, was my Low Rent Metal thread, which I certainly wouldn't have covered Warlord in.

Are you sure you're not thinking of my Batcave journal? This is just me reviewing random albums.

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Trollheart

No, I used to love your style in this too, the headphone pictures and the random music you would look at.

Having said that, bring back The Batcave too!

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

The Batlord

I've just been lazy about this thread. And I'm not touching The Batcave till I have the next installment of Return of the Kings of Metal. Which... is having technical difficulties.

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The Batlord

Been diggin' Boris, so I've been throwing on whatever albums by them that RYM said weren't drone, and now I'm on this album. What a weird ****ing album. RYM lists the genres of the album as "noise rock, stoner metal, stoner rock, sludge metal, psychedelic rock, doom metal". Does that help you out any? Well it shouldn't, cause I'm almost done listening to this thing and I still don't know what the **** to call it.

First track "Farewell" is the lovechild of My Bloody Valentine and Eyehategod. Lethargic, heavy riffs meet lush, dreamy walls of distortion to make sweet, sweet love to your ears. So, got your sludge metal, noise rock, and I guess psychedelic rock covered right there. It's a ****ing awesome song too, so I'm all stoked for more of the same.

Then comes the title track. It's pretty much stoner/noise rock played at punk rock speed. Okay. Some variety. Nice. Also a ****ing awesome song. Just totally infectious, and the dude's singing voice has this great energy. The next two songs are pretty much the same, and all just as awesome. I'm kind of confused now, because at no point has the sound of the first song been referenced at all. I ain't mad though, cause even if it doesn't all make sense, the band hasn't dropped the ball yet. This album is kicking some ass!

And now we come to "(Blackout)". Things slow down again, so I'm figuring they're going to start incorporating the two sounds they've used thus far and create even higher levels of awesome. NOPE! Instead of either shoegazey sludge of noisy stoner we get mostly instrumental doom awash in a thick layer of feedback and distortion that is harrowing and creepy rather than dreamy. What the **** is going on? Did the band just not have any idea what kind of music they wanted to write from day to day and just decide to record the album anyway? Am I being ****ed with?

I don't know whether or not I should have been expecting it when the band goes back to the high energy stoner of earlier. Still, there's a further twist, as the next song is a one minute and forty-five second long instrumental. Well played Boris. Well played. But soon enough it's back to stoner business, and **** me do Boris play some of the best stoner rock I've ever heard in my life. They may not have the thunderous heaviness of Kyuss due to the high speed they're playing, but that much distortion coming at you at such high speeds makes it feel like you're on the back of a Kawasaki motorcycle while the driver is in an illegal street race.

They slow things down yet again for "Afterburner" (ironically enough), but rather than dreamy sludge or evil doom, they now play some slacker stoner that sounds like Black Sabbath are too baked off their asses to really do much more than sit around in a circle and lazily jam while passing around joints. If Boris' parents needed any further proof that their kids like doing drugs then here is Exhibit ... **** if I know what exhibit they're up to now.

After one more blast of double-speed stoner the band move on to an eleven-minute song, "My Machine", that makes it sound like the band were like, "You know who's awesome? Brian Eno." There's what sounds like piano with some slow, dreamy guitar that eventually devolves into ambient feedback, backed with intermittent sound effects that sound more like waves on a beach than anything else. By the end, everything but those weird wave-sounding effects fade out. I feel like I should be ready for whatever head-****ery Boris wants to throw at me by this point, but I am yet again thrown for a loop.

Closing out the album is "Just Abandoned Myself", an eighteen-minute song that I guess is their version of "Sister Ray". It barrels along at full speed with that punkified stoner/noise sound for several minutes, before devolving into feedback backed by a fully functioning rhythm section, until the drums fade away as well, leaving a repetitive bass line playing under ever increasing swathes of noise, and then even the bass is gone. The song is now only a little over halfway done at this point. Somewhere in the background there's a guitar that occasionally pops up to do nothing in particular but be weird, aaaannnnndddd that's the rest of the song, end album, where's Boris' ****ing Grammy?

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The Batlord

Those not familiar with my Metal Album Survivor thread can kiss my ass, but if you are then you know about all those top ten lists I've compiled. I don't know if you people realize just how much time and effort I put into those on an ongoing basis: coming up with new lists, refining old ones, and just in general listening to a vast ****load of metal just to make sure my lists are suitably awesome. It's honestly a compulsion at this point -- I'm currently pulling my hair out trying to redo my metalcore list.

But ATM most of them are just sitting around collecting dust, and I put too much blood sweat and tears into this **** to let that happen, so I'm gonna give some short thoughts on each. I imagine this is gonna be a grab bag, as some of these albums were included by reputation rather than because I actually liked them -- I'm trying to be impartial after all -- and some of those I have only given cursory listens to just cause I felt I should. Imma start with the first battle: thrash...




I won't deny the vast nutsack this album possesses. It's a steel-booted kick right to your temple finished off with a curb stomp. That said, I've never been the biggest Kreator fan. I think their riffs are just too dissonant for my taste. They have plenty of moments that seriously kick ass, but I just can't get behind them 100%.




**** you people for voting this off so fast. Kiss my ass. Wpnfire and I almost came to blows that I picked this over their Darkness Descends album, and while I dig that record, Time Does Not Heal is just one of my all-time fav metal albums -- and it's my ****ing thread so I reserve the right to the odd personal pick. The band uses their technical proficiency to create a complex, crushing, misanthropic atmosphere that adds a level of emotional immersion that one almost never feels with a thrash metal album. I really can't think of another thrash album that I can throw on, switch off the lights, lay in bed, stare at the ceiling, and just contemplate everything that is wrong with my life and myself in despair. Time Does Not Heal was just a unique piece of vinyl in a sea of imitators and also-rans.




I go back and forth with Testament. They kick some ass, don't get me wrong, but they're also the perfect example of a second wave thrash band standing on the shoulders of their big brothers without really doing anything to add to anything. They don't up the brutality meter, they don't experiment, all they really do is make catchy, middle-of-the-road thrash tailor-made to appeal to '80s kids who'd just graduated from Judas Priest and thought they were the **** just cause they had a copy of Reign In Blood. On the other hand, this is a fairly kickass album that is catchy as ****. *shrug*




Another band I'm funny about. They're certainly not a bad band by any stretch of the imagination, and they have more song-writing capability than a lot of their brutal thrash peers, but they don't have quite the same "Oomph!" If I wanna listen to that kind of thing then I generally skip Sepultura and go straight for Demolition Hammer and Exhorder -- who may not be as good bands, but man do they rip harder than Sep. Not a bad album by any stretch of the imagination though.




I love how little of a **** this album gives. "Speak English or Die", "**** the Middle East", "Premenstrual Princess Blues", "Kill Yourself", etc. This band had no taste and wanted everyone to know it. I guess since this was a side project of some of the guys from Anthrax that they felt some freedom to **** around. More importantly is just how much ass it kicked. So ****ing heavy, with a crunchy guitar tone that holds up to this day -- and just check that epic blastbeat all over "Milk" by Charlie mother****ing Benante (Wheat Thins and beer, dude). I really can't think of a crossover thrash album that exemplifies the melding of thrash and hardcore quite as perfectly as Speak English or Die.




Oh my god I love this album. It was one of the albums that made me realize that I was a metalhead and a thrash fan way back when I was thirteen/fourteen. I love it both for its sheer awesomeness and its complete and utter lack of anything approaching class. The lyrics, the cover, the myopic music, and the "singing", everything is garbage. Glorious, wonderful, beautiful garbage. "Get in our way and we're going to take your life! Kick in your face and rape and murder your wife!" I think that says it all right there.




Don't get me wrong, I loves me some Anthrax, and this is a kickass album, but I think of Anthrax as a trad/speed metal band that went thrash cause that was just the thing to do. Not that they were jumping on a bandwagon, I just think somewhere inbetween Spreading the Disease and this album would have been the perfect fit for them. I miss those outrageous, Dickinson-esque vocals from the former album, but I also dig the improved songwriting overall with Among the Living. Is it any surprise that one of my two fav songs is one where they really let Joey belt out some melodic metal singing? ("Indians", and even if it's less melodic "I Am the Law" is just a monster.) Pay me no mind though, cause "Indians" has some insane riffs, and a ****ing badass mosh section ("WAR DANCE!!!") -- so this band clearly knew what they were doing, even if I miss some of those more melodic elements.




Would I be overstepping my bounds to say that out of all eighties metal bands that the only one with better covers than Megadeth was Iron Maiden? Whatever, I'm right and you're wrong. Another album I grew up on and is pretty much imprinted on my DNA at this point. Not quite as angry or thrashy as their previous albums, this was a melodic speed metal album that goes for the throat as much as it burrows into your ears. "Hangar 18", "Take No Prisoners", "Polaris", "Tornado of Souls"... holy **** I love album!




I'd actually been kind of "over" this album for a while until recently. Then I listened to it again during the thrash battle and realized just how heavy it ****ing is. James Hetfield's rhythm guitar is just amazing. It doesn't quite have the 5-Star classics as some of their other albums, but what it does have going for it is a perfect track order: "Welcome to the Thrash Fest" song, complex centerpiece setting a new standard in thrash maturity, slow down with a heavy-as-**** mid-paced song to keep things from getting monotonous, and then hit you with a left-field quasi-ballad; turn over to the B-side and the simple formula is repeated: relatively complex thrash that's the closest thing to filler on the whole damn album, mid-paced building leveler, off-beat instrumental, and just to let you know what kind of ****ing album you're listening to they give you a companion thrash fest to the first song to tear your liver asunder.




I may have voted for Metallica in the final round of the thrash battle, but I bear no grudge against Slayer. This right here is the thrash Bible. What Metallica and Exodus primitively layed down with their debuts, Slayer finished with this album. It may not have the complexity of Time Does Not Heal or Master of Puppets, but it is the ultimate crystallization of pure, aggressive thrash. There are very few albums of any metal genre, even in black and death metal, that have the sheer level of bug-eyed testosterone flowing through their veins as this masterpiece of all things metal. Hail Satan!

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The Batlord

The next installment is about a genre I've only recently become a fan of: metalcore. For lists like thrash and death metal it was relatively easy to throw them together, as I had years of experience with the genres, and they are so popular that even if I did need a reference to help me narrow down ten albums, I have a million and one sources that have reached a loose consensus on what constitutes the best of the best.

Unfortunately with metalcore there is such a stigma attached that many with taste don't give it the time of day to find out if there even is anything anything worth exploring; and the ones that do probably subconsciously ignore it to an extent due to peer pressure. The anti-metalcore hate is so deep in the metal underground that I can't even fault those who scoff at it -- I certainly did for years.

And those with actual opinions on the subject are more often than not "poseurs" who are only aware of As I Lay Dying and Killswitch Engage. So I had to give myself a crash course in metalcore and make some hard judgement calls to even begin to narrow down ten albums, and I'm still not sure if my list is complete, but I'm pretty satisfied with it ATM.

P.S. I'm splitting this entry into two halves, since this is an upcoming battle made up of bands that a lot of people probably aren't familiar with, so I'm gonna put up a couple Youtube vids for each entry.

Metal/Mathcore

First of two bands I've already covered in my metalcore thread. Can't be helped. God these dudes rule. This album is just an anvil heavy monster with grooves and breakdowns -- obviously influenced by Pantera -- that hold up just as much today as they did twenty years ago. This is just a misanthropic hate**** of a record that is the soundtrack to a concussion in the pit. This album fully deserves its spot in this battle, and you better listen to it. Bitch.






One of the first bands to open my eyes to the true awesomeness of metalcore. This is an intense record with a dash of post-hardcore to give some of those riffs a dissonant edge. The vocals are hardcore as **** while still sounding unique and just drill right into your brain. If you want your metallic hardcore to sound metal as **** while still having the heart and soul of a hardcore band then this is the perfect album for you. Also one of the albums that opened my eyes to the fact that thrash and death metal -- even the brutal variety -- can't hold a candle to metalcore in terms of sheer intensity.






I already went on at some length about this band on my metalcore thread, but I'll give them some more love right now, cause they deserve it. They're an experimental mathcore band with all the dissonant, angular riffing that entails. They throw in some odd musical experiments that bring to mind pre-Colors Between the Buried and Me, though without being nearly as self-consciously weird.

Don't be fooled by their experimentalism into thinking that Botch are anything less than brutal metalcore however, as these guys rip as hard as any more straightforward band. There's a reason that all three of their albums are in the top eleven of RYM's top album chart for metalcore. World class world destroyers right here.






This is a new band for me, just like every single one of the bands on this list, but even more so because they very nearly didn't make it on here. Their earlier work is very well respected -- they're a founding metalcore band who are as much godfathers to the genre as Ringworm -- but personally I find them patchy, even on their good albums. They know how to rip when they want to, but they're too close to old school hardcore for me. Worst of all is their singer, whose voice just grates on me -- but who it also must be said is the only constant member of the band, and is therefore probably responsible for anything I do like about them.

Though this is a highly rated album in their discography, I imagine a few of their earlier releases would have been used by actual fans of the band, but upon hearing this mother****er all my issues with Integrity went out the window. (Somewhat) gone is the ultra-primitive sound of their nineties period, and likewise the lo-fi production. This is a clear case of a band being influenced by those they have influenced, as this album has an updated sound that references current (as of '03) levels of brutality, all while putting to shame many of the bands who had been building on the template already laid down by Integrity.

This is just a ****ing monster of an album that unleashes plenty of their familiar traditional hardcore fury and slower metal riffs, but this time around they've mastered the art of the brutal, crushing breakdown. They don't employ it as a crutch like many modern pretenders, and don't rely on rehashed, stuttering grooves-sans-riffs like your average deathcore band, instead incorporating them into their core sound to fill in gaps that long time fans probably don't want to admit were there. Many bands going this route would probably ruin what made them special, but as Integrity were never big on subtlety or complexity, this straight-forward approach loses nothing while bringing their sound to another level of brutality. Likewise, a much heavier and more professional production adds a punch that they only hinted at before.

Had I never given this album a chance on a whim, to give the band one more shot at making the list, they would have been dropped like a bad habit, but this release is one that I won't even consider removing if I need to make room in the future.






However much metal might be in these guys' sound, Ringworm is a hardcore band through and through. This is also easily the grittiest, grimiest, old school hardcoriest release on my list. This album knows no subtlety, no post-hardcore/mathcore flourishes, no modern "improvements" besides an increase in brutality from their start a decade earlier (another OG metalcore band). This is raw, feral metalcore of the ugliest variety. One of those bands that you just know would blow any headliner off the stage if they were the support act.

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