Carpe Mortem

I didn't like it.

3/10

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Unknown Soldier

Are we meant to be using Trollheart's formula thingy or just writing a few lines and a score?

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Metal Wars

Power Metal

Pounding Decibels- A Hard and Heavy History

Anteater

We'll be using an abbreviated version of TH's formula, since I don't think its necessary to have as many fields as he uses.


Album Title: Countdown To Extinction
Artist: Megadeth
Nationality: American
Year: 1992
Subgenre: Somewhat proggy thrash metal
Familiarity: Very.

Favourite Track(s): Symphony Of Destruction, Foreclosure Of A Dream
Why? One of the best politically charged metal singles of all time coupled with an unconventional mid-tempo groover makes for a good sequence.

Least Favourite Track(s): None.
Why? N/A

End Impression: Excellent at its best, rock solid at its worst.
Comments: In the wake of albums like Metallica's Black Album from the previous year, Queensryche's Empire and bands like Pantera coming out of the woodwork, the double Daves (Mustaine and Ellefson) needed to put together music that remained true to the sound they had spent the last couple of classic albums pioneering whilst softening up jusssst enough to be palatable enough for the masses in arenas across the country. The results of that tricky compromise at their best, like in the swaggering 'Symphony Of Destruction', 'Architecture Of Aggression' or the proggy 'Ashes In Your Mouth', are what make this album click so well and also why it outsold everything that had come before in mere weeks. Sometimes being at the right place at the right time is all that matters, and progressive metal's viability as a mainstream genre was very, very brief: Megadeth would never click this well again or try to write commercial tunes this technical, but perhaps that was for the best when you consider how meh their output after this one would be.

Rating 4.0

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Anteater's 21 Fav Albums Of 2020

Anteater's Daily Tune Roulette

Unknown Soldier

Ok cool, mine up tomorrow morning European time.

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Metal Wars

Power Metal

Pounding Decibels- A Hard and Heavy History

Unknown Soldier

Album Title: Countdown To Extinction
Artist: Megadeth
Nationality: American
Year: 1992
Subgenre: thrash metal
Familiarity: Very.
Favourite Track(s): Symphony Of Destruction, This Was My Life, Ashes in Your Mouth
Why? SOD one of the signature tunes of the band and so Megadeth. The other two tracks are probably my picks from the rest of the album and flow well with the band's technical playing.
Least Favourite Track(s): Sweating Bullets
Why? Dave at his silliest.
End Impression: One of the band's best albums, but not their best.
Comments: The album that saw Megadeth switch to a commercial thrash band, which largely came in the wake of Metallica's Black Album and was Dave Mustaine's attempt to make the band more accessible than ever, with a range of poppier tunes. I always find it interesting how something as aggressive as thrash ended up going full circle in the end (as far as some bands were concerned) and were putting out something not much more aggressive than say British Steel from around 10 years earlier. As for the album though the tracks are tight and the playing technical as you'd expect and despite a couple of silly 'Dave' moments on the album it's a winner. Saying all this I'd hardly put it in a prog list but then again Anteater sees things or hears things in music the rest of us don't

Rating 4.0

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Metal Wars

Power Metal

Pounding Decibels- A Hard and Heavy History

Anteater

^ Nah, it definitely belongs in a prog list, although its not prog in the 70's sense. Its the technicality of the riffs, the nuances on some of the individual songs and the overall theme of the record that qualifies it.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to everyone else's thoughts on Countdown To Extinction, but seeing as its Sunday, I'll go ahead and announce next album in case people wanted a different album to jump into for the club. Using a random number generator I ended up landing on number 70, which is-


Advent - Cantus Firmus (2006)

This one is definitely more in the 70's prog-rock vein, and a long time favorite of mine. Think classic Gentle Giant mixed with a 90's neo-prog ambient aesthetic, sprinkled with some Trepass-era Genesis pastorality for kicks. This mixture results in a unique atmosphere, and it definitely sounds like the missing "epic" styled album that the Shulman brothers never did in their heyday.

After this album, we'll go back to the methodology where we take turns week-by-week in bringing several albums to the table that people have the option to review, and we'll stick to the abbreviated version of Trollheart's review matrix US and I used above for these future reviews as well.

On another note, I'd love people to think up new things we could be doing with this club to make it more engaging and bring in more contributing core members, so feel free to offer your suggestions between all the album reviewing.

Besides YouTube, I'm pretty sure Cantus Firmus is streamable/downloadable in all kinds of places. You can also stream and/or buy the album from their official BandCamp page here: http://advent-prog.bandcamp.com/album/cantus-firmus

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Anteater's 21 Fav Albums Of 2020

Anteater's Daily Tune Roulette

Xurtio

Album Title: Countdown To Extinction
Artist: Megadeth
Nationality: American
Year: 1992
Subgenre: Melodic thrash
Familiarity: I was part of the juvenile "megadeth > metallic" mentality in my larvae metal stage.
Favourite Track(s): Foreclosure of a Dream, Captive Honour
Why? simply because they stand out from other Megadeth songs (that all tend to sound the same)
Least Favourite Track(s): Skin O' My Teeth
Why? While I agree that Sweating Bullets is silly, it's still interesting in that way, and Skin O' My Teeth isn't bad, it just doesn't stand out in anyway.
End Impression: Overall, a good album, very consistent musical atmosphere and theme conceptually.
Comments: I can see how you might call Megadeth proggish. While the theme, attitude, and timbre of the vocals and the guitars is all very thrash, there is a lot of iconic melodic structure and evolving progressions in many Megadeth songs, which are the primary characteristics of prog. So the imagery, the wrapper... it's thrash. But the underlying music theory is all very proggish.

Anyway, this review exposed me to a couple songs that I haden't heard (or at least not recognized) as I've never really listened to Megadeth "by the album". I just kind of mass downloaded random Megadeth songs off of Kazaa at one point in my youth. So it's good to hear stuff that was outside of that P2P aggregate.
Rating: 4.0

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Moss

Sorry I'm late!

Album Title: Countdown To Extinction
Artist: Megadeth
Nationality: American
Year: 1992
Subgenre: thrash metal
Familiarity: Pretty damn
Favourite Track(s): Symphony Of Destruction
Why? Was a big hit for a reason. Just a great riff and good lyrics. Plus I used to play this live in my old band.
Least Favourite Track(s): Sweating Bullets
Why? Kind of the other "hit" but his vocals are a bit annoying in this one.
End Impression: Great album worth repeated listens.
Comments: Not my fave album by them (that would be Rust in peace) but still quite good. It's really the classic line up of the band with Marty Friedman, shredder extraordinaire on guitar. Always thought he complimented Mustaine nicely and he just rips. I like the political nature of the album and some of the subject matter. For example, Countdown to extinction is a great comment on canned hunting. Although it seems like a bid for commercial acceptance, it still has some great in your face riffs and does not sound overly polished. I like the rather cheesy spoken word kind of stuff on it. Just an all around great group of songs and an album I would revisit more often than the Metallica Black album it sometimes gets compared against. I will continue the trend with a rating of:
Rating: 4.0

Carpe Mortem

Album Title: Countdown To Extinction
Artist: Megadeth
Nationality: American
Year: 1992
Subgenre: thrash metal
Familiarity: Not well, despite often referring to them as a Metallica cover band
Favourite Track(s): Symphony Of Destruction, Sweating Bullets, Countdown to Extinction
Why? The first one I've always dug, heard it many a time and it sticks with you. Sweating Bullets had a sexy intro and really good swing back and forth with that falling low tone. Countdown to Extinction was just gorgeously melodic and separate from the rest of the album, deserved its place as the album's namesake.
Least Favourite Track(s): This Was My Life, Psychotron
Why? Just annoying vocal bits, boring instrumental bits aside from a few little fun parts. I don't need a rational reason, they were all just straight up unpleasant to my ears.
End Impression: Meh, I'd listen to the songs I listed as favorites again but I wouldn't bother getting the whole album.
Comments: Maybe it just aint my bag, baby.
Rating: 3.5/10

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Carpe Mortem

Album Title: Cantus Firmus
Artist: Advent
Nationality: American
Year: 2006
Subgenre: Prog
Familiarity: None
Favourite Track(s): Awaiting the Call, Ramblin Sailor
Why? Awaiting the Call: Beautiful, would make a fantastic soundtrack for ambient music on a game like Dawn of Mana. I especially enjoyed the last minute or so.
Ramblin Sailor: Pretty much a whole album in itself, so there's a little something for everyone.
Least Favourite Track(s): Parenting Parents
Why? Just a bit too mellow and dull for me.
End Impression: Good stuff! Some parts were fawkin great.
Comments: I think anyone could get down with this, it's fantastic background music for a warm day spent in nature.
Rating: 8/10

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