Trollheart

From the Choir Girl Hotel - Tori Amos

Okay, I'm going to stop here. I can't get past the basic aping by Amos of Bush. Her inflections, her pronunciations, her wails, her intakes of breath: it's all Kate Bush and I don't want to insult you by giving this a very biased review, so I'm going to pass on it. I doubt I'll listen to another Amos record. All through the first listen to this all I could think of was how much I would prefer to be listening to a Kate album. I'm sure it's not deliberate, but it's like she's capitalising on Kate's style to such an extent that she's a poorly watered-down copy of her, and I don't like that, even if it's only my own perceptions that are doing it. **** it: even her "quirkiness" seems put-on, as if she's read all there is to read about Kate and thought "I'll have some of that" or "It worked for her, so it'll work for me." I want the real thing, not a cheap and very obvious knock-off.

I'll do one of the other albums, but I'm passing on this.
Sorry.

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MicShazam

Holy cow, that's not the reaction I was expecting. I know she rubs some people the wrong way, but still. Fair game anyway. While I don't quite see the Kate Bush aping, it's at least a bit easier to kinda understand what you mean with this particular album, as it plays up the arty poppiness a bit. I definitely feel like Tori very much has a singing voice all her own, with a distinct Southern twang that only seems to get more pronounced with age.

If you still want to do another, then that Helloween album, Better Than Raw would be fun to see your take on. For some reason, this album and the one before it are not on Spotify. It seems they belong to a label that have not agreed to the same contract as Nuclear Blast - who probably owns all of the other albums of the band at this point.

If you can't find a good quality upload on Youtube or elsewhere, I could upload it myself. Just let me know.

Trollheart

No that's cool. I own all the Helloween discography. I'll do that one and another one from your list. I'll take a look. Sorry about Tori: guess we'll have to split the divorce proceedings.

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MicShazam

Allright cool. Didn't know how familiar you would be with Helloween.

If you're gonna do an additional one, then can I change which Dir En Grey album it would be? If I can, I'd pick Withering to Death instead. If not, then I'd rather you did the Céu album that I mentioned (Vagarosa). Totally your choice of course

Trollheart

Yeah, I'll do the Grey dudes, sure. Why not? Hell, I'll do that other one too. I have a lot of time on my hands now. Might as well make meself useful.

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MicShazam

Great! I seriously can't quite make a qualified guess what your reactions will be, so that's going to be fun to see.

Trollheart

Better Than Raw – Helloween (1998)

Hah! Love the tongue-in-cheek orchestral intro, and the title. ****ing great. Ah shoot though: there's no Kiske and no Kai. Darn: I really preferred Helloween with those two guys in. It's kind of a little generic really, though “Time” perks me up, and “I Can” has a lot of commercial appeal about it (hence its being released as a single, though not a successful one) – in fact, the album gets a lot better after that. Even so, it's a pale shadow beside the likes of Seven Keys, Walls of Jericho or even Master of the Rings. Then again, how do you make a power metal album stand out? Not so easy, though I do like the humour Helloween use here on some of the songs. Nice to see they don't take themselves all that seriously. But I wouldn't consider this one of their better albums, to be honest.

Track Listing
Deliberately Limited Preliminary Prelude Period in Z
Push
Falling Higher
Hey Lord!
Spit On My Mind
Revelation
Time
I Can
Handful of Pain
Laudate Dominum
Back On the Ground
Midnight Sun

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MicShazam

I really prefer the Deris years, honestly. In fact, I don't even like the albums with Kiske on vocal, but I do have their debut album with Kai Hansen. Better Than Raw remains my favorite Helloween album, but it's hard to explain why. It's got something to do with how it sounds, with the songwriting (although there are a few misses in the tracklist), and how it's the only Helloween album where the band employed a trio of backup singers, which really adds a special vibe to a lot of these tracks. It's a very unusual decision and it seems odd to me that no one ever remarks on it.

MicShazam

Time for another bunch of new (& old) music:

Frequency Drift - Electricity

I found this on on Metalinjection but it's not metal in the slightest. I'm not sure what I think of it. The singer seemed kinda weak at first, but the song grew on me. The band has covered Marillion before, and this does perhaps sound vaguely like something that could have been on the Marillion.com album. Also sort of Anathema-ish, but less boring (Anathema is a boring band, but I'm sure you know that already).

Laura Voutilainen - Mä en kestä

Don't remember where I found this, but it's sorta fun to listen to. I like the Finnish folk music twist it takes on modern pop.


David Sylvian - Robert Fripp / Damage (Full Album)


I read about the influences of the band Dir En Grey somewhere and David Sylvian got a namedrop. I definitely see his dark textures and atmospheres in the band's music. I'm thinking of getting some of Sylvian's albums. Seems like I could dig this and the albums are fairly cheap on Amazon.

Nile - To Walk Forth From Flames Unscathed

I don't listen to a lot of death metal (almost none, actually), but I was reminded yesterday just how good their newest album is. So many fun riffs!

Izzy bizu - Naïve Soul

Immediately fell in love with this song and ordered the album right away. Just ****ing great music!

MicShazam

CD collection deep dive part 1

I did a fairly precise count of my CD's recently and it turns out I have about 630 separate albums, which means I'm counting multi-disc albums as one. I listen to a lot of music, but with this many CD's, there's bound to be a lot of stuff that I haven't listened to in a long time. I thought it would be fun to write a bit about some of these albums as I dig through my shelves and listen to some of my most neglected albums.

Some of this will also be stuff that I probably haven't talked much about on this site, although I admittedly don't have the most expansive music collection. I really, really need to find some more artists to add to my collection, to be honest.

Anyway, I'll just start with what I've been listening to yesterday and this evening:

After Forever - Remagine
Symphonic/power-metal, 2005


Listen to the album on Spotify.

This album has a few things going against it from the outset. For one, it's symphonic metal (at least to some degree) and the cover artwork is pretty bad. However, contained within is a pretty solid, lightly proggy, somewhat power metal-ish album with some strong vocal performances and genuinely catchy songwriting. After Forver is a band that I pretty much consider terrible, but this one album is quite different from their other material. Their main songwriter/composer had basically vacated the premises, leaving the band to stretch their legs a bit and do something different. It's not a very well liked album among fans, but the fact that it doesn't sound like regular After Forever is a plus in my book.

Floor Jansen is a good singer in my book, but this is the only album she's ever sung on that I can really get fully behind (to my knowledge anyway). I've almost gotten rid of the CD several times, whenever I've done a big clean-up of my album collection, but then I hear songs like Boundaries Are Open and Being Everyone and I remember why I need to keep this thing.


The Cursed - Room Full of Sinners
Hard rock/groove metal, 2007


This Bobby Blitz side project isn't available on Spotify and I don't expect most Overkill fans to have even heard of it. It's basically a bunch of bluesy, dirty and heavy hard rock tunes that simply sound like Overkill minus the thrash.

I've never been crazy about this album, but it's survived in my collection for all these years (10ish), so it's not without merit. I think Blitz' rough edged voice has a sort of nuance and swagger to it that makes him a perfect fit for this sort of music. I think overly testosterone pumped, forced "bro-dude" vocals get tiring real quick, so it's really nice to see just how much flair Blitz can bring to the table here.

I don't know exactly who I'd recommend this to, but I guess that at the very least, any Overkill fan ought to give it a spin. I think it's a pretty charming album and the songwriting isn't half bad.


Cruachan - Pagan
Folk metal, 2004


Listen to the album on Spotify.

Despite Arkona being one of my favorite bands, I'm not really a big fan of folk metal. The only other CD I have in the genre is this Cruachan album. I've known about the band for many years, but I didn't get into them until last year, where I found one of their CD's downtown and took a chance with it.

Aside from the crappy sound mix, it's a pretty solid album. I love how there's this very punky edge to a lot of the drumming and the vocal delivery. They avoid this overdone, cinematic style that a lot of folk metal bands go for and indstead shoot pretty straight with some fiddle & bagpipe assisted heavy metal tunes you can nod your head to.

I don't really have any idea of the history of the band or the rest of their discography, but I really dig the (two?) singers on this album, especially (to the surprise of no one) the woman with the clear voice. In a way, I think the relative straight forwardness is what I appreciate the most about the band. Arkona is such an ambitious band, exhibiting evermore knotty and obtuse songwriting, that it's refreshing to hear something on the other end of that scale.


Voivod - Target Earth
Progressive thrash metal, 2013


Listen to the album on Spotify.

It's the only Voivod album that I own and it's only relatively recently that I've begun trying to appreciate it more. It's been paying off and I think I need to take a look at the rest of their discography soon.

I really, really love their riffs! The way they combine these exotic chords with some mildly prog-flavored thrash riffs gives the band such a unique feel. The vocals on this album are spot on as well, despite the fact that this is a 2013 album from a very old band. The album sounds as vital and inspired as anything made by a young band would, so I don't feel that I'm going to have to eat my words if I say that this is a very good Voivod album, even without really having heard their old classics yet.

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I'm currently listening to a Grip Inc. album, but I don't feel like I'll have much to say about it, so this is it for now. I've got a whole stack of CD's to listen through, so there will be more posts like this.