Oh awesome! Thanks! I'm really digging Månegarm too.

I'm not sure if this band's really considered metal, but I downloaded the Arbor Vitae demo and really liked it. They sound like Amorphis to me, which is one of my favorite bands. If anyone's heard of them, do you know if they'll be releasing a full album sometime soon? I couldn't find any info on them anywhere.

Got ahold of Dark Tranquillity's new album, Fiction. It's really rather badass, and I'll probably have to pick it up as soon as my semester's done.

For the most part it's a continuation of their work on Character, with heavy riffs and blistering solos, but I like the melody work on this album a lot more.

There are actually a couple of nods to their older work, like "The Mundane and the Magic," or parts of "Misery's Crown," where they goth out Depeche Mode style, and even include some female vocals. Not my favorite parts, but the other 8 tracks are more than worth the price of admission in my opinion.

Definitely check out their single "Focus Shift" if you're interested.

So I got a leaked copy of Megadeth's new album, United Abominations.

Music wise, it's pretty much exactly what I'd expect from Dave: the same songs over and over again. He seemingly took this approach after Risk, that he was just going to record the same old thrash songs over and over again. I liked a lot of the songs on the last two albums, and the riffs on this album have their merits too.

The music really isn't what I have a problem with though.

I really wish the dude would get like a songwriter, even if it meant another singer. Dave can not write lyrics. He used to be alright. He wasn't ever very good or insightful, but they used to be passable. Jesus, the first song, Sleepwalker sounded like the lyrics would be great by early era Pantera in the 80s. They're horrendous. Here's some choice bits -

Jesus. Fucking. Christ.

In the song "Blessed are the Dead" he says the word "horse" about 400 times, referencing the song Warhorse (intentionally or not) and the goddamn Four Horsemen, which irritates me since he decided to NOT do Four Hoursmen, but fucking "Mechanix", which is not better a song than any of the ones on here lyrically, but still.

Let's just look at the song titles. "Amerikhastan", "You're Dead". What is this, an Alice Cooper album? Even worse, "A Tout Le Monde (Set Me Free)". WHY in the hell did he decide it was alright to basically rerecord a song that had no reason to be rerecorded whatsoever (I've also always hated this song, so it was like double >=U)

I'm listening to "Amerikhastan" right now. Why. So bad.
Now I'm listening to "You're Dead". There's no way this album is serious.

I'm pretty sick of his outright political agenda too. He has nothing interesting or relevant to say at all. *waves* HEY! DID YOU KNOW THERE'S A WAR!? IN THE MIDDLE EAST! HEY, THERE'S CORRUPTION, LISTEN TO ME! *waves* I just realized that he's been writing the same song, well forever. It either falls in the vein of NUCLEAR HOLOCAUST, I HATE YOU, or the APOCALYPSE.

Now, really, I haven't ever minded the lyrical quality/diversity of Dave. The lyrics were never that bad that they were distracted from me enjoying most of the songs. And I LIKE most of Megadeth's albums up to this, even Risk.

But Christ, just listen to this. It's like he's TRYING to be Alice Cooper. Every time I think a song might be alright he says something so dumb that makes me think that I'll never be able to listen to that song again.

So yeah, all in all. I hate this album. Someone please download it and hate it too.

EDIT: I actually told my roommate that the lyrics on this album almost made me forgive Metallica for making St. Anger. God forgive me.

To confirm this, I listened to "Invisible Kid" on St. Anger. I do not forgive them.

Sucks that bad, eh? Somehow that's not a surprise.

Yeah "abominations" is a fairly accurate label to be fair. "Gears of War" was a good song though!

Stuff I've been hooked on since I last posted includes:

Devin Townsend - Ziltoid the Omniscient. This album is like fifties comic book sci-fi metal. It's heavy and hilarious and it's the first non-ambient album Devy's produced solo for years. Totally worth it.

Also the new Dream Theater songs "Constant Motion" and "The Dark Eternal Night". There's a lot of bitching about both because, hey, it's a Dream Theater album produced after 2000 so it has to have a significant quota of hate directed towards it. Both songs are pretty good.

Lastly, the new Symphony X is heavy. I don't like it. I don't like them anyway, so this is a moot point.

I am very much liking what I've heard from Constant Motion. I hope the rest of the album is that caliber. Downloading "The Dark Eternal Night" now.

Also downloading new Symphony X now. I heard some samples and it sounds like the last album, just heavier, so I'll probably like it.

When "Gears of War" first came out I wasn't overly impressed with the song, but I certainly didn't think the rest of the album would be THAT bad.

The best metal album I've listened to recently (and really, it HAS to qualify as metal) is John Zorn's Six Litanies For Heliogabalus. It is the heaviest thing I have heard in years.

Hooray for Zorn!

Anyone like Ghoul? I like Ghoul. Kind of old-school death metal with some thrash and hardcore punk influences. Nice stuff. Lyrics are pretty fucking hilarious too.

Additional Spam:
/r/ upload of said album, if it hasn't been already uploaded.

Haha, Dave Mustaine has been a joke for a while now. I can barely listen to old Megadeth without cringing because he's become an even bigger tool than Lars.

Dream Theater - Systematic Chaos.

Yeah I am going to be wanking all over the forums about this album for quite a long time.

It's that good.

Holy crap, Hevy Devy and Dream Theater have new albums out? Where the hell have I been?

OMG, Systematic Chaos is on a fucking DVD! I'm wet.

I'll just post to agree that I fucking love Systematic Chaos as well. I was really expecting the full out metal style afforded on Train of Thought due to Portnoy's explanation of it's style, but I really dig what came out anyway. Kind of a more Opeth/Porcupine Tree style influence on some of the slower songs. The only way I've felt it necessary to describe some of the Petrucci/Rudess solo sections to people is describing how many people they killed as a result of playing them. Solos on Dark Eternal Night are just ridiculously astounding. It was also interesting to see a slow song for Repentance, I expected faster and heavy from one of the AA songs. Not to say I didn't like the song, quite the contrary, but I was surprised they took that approach with this particular "suite". Presence of Enemies fucking rules too (apparently it was just split into two parts for the cd, but is actually one song, which once again makes it their longest song to date). There's not an album on this track that I dislike whatsoever which I can't say the same for Octavarium (not a big fan of The Answers Lie Within, These Walls and I Walk Besides You, LOVE the rest of the album though).

I find there is often hot debate about Dream Theater's work as to what is better - most people usually regards Scenes as their best album but the two camps of fans seem to either like what was before Scenes or after it. I find there is much criticism of their 2000s work. I actually prefer everything from Scenes on more but I do enjoy their whole discography immensely (although I was never a huge fan of Images and Words, or When Dream and Day Unite, but that was for more Dominici related reasons, I do like the official bootleg with LaBrie doing the whole album live).

And it seems they abandoned the paradigm of starting the album with the note that the last album ended on. Though critical analysis of Octavarium itself will reveal that that was likely to happen anyway.

Seems like they abandoned the whole numbers game aspect too (as Six Degrees related to the number six and had six parts, Train of Thought had seven tracks, as well as other things relating to seven and Octavarium for obvious reasons had many relations to the numbers five and eight, besides the title and track listing - genius concept if analyzed, also a great album and fantastic title track). Doesn't seem to have much going on relating to the number nine right now, perhaps "Systematic Chaos" is poking at the fact that they disrupted their number game paradigm. Maybe one day I'll know, heh.

All in all, I think this is just a bloody brilliant album.



Also, kind of overshadowed for me, but I really liked the new Symphony X album. I do indeed enjoy the heavy. It's like Odyssey+ for me. I was kind of expecting him to do Odyssey part 2 and I still wonder if they will ever do it, otherwise it seems quite pointless to have titled it "Part 1".

Dream Theater is going on tour with Into Eternity, I can't wait to see that.

I picked up Awake several days ago and it's not too bad. It hasn't really sunk in yet and I still need to pick up some of the essentials from their discography.

Ok, so in my absence from the metal thread my tastes have shifted and grown slightly.

I've been adding bands and styles to my tastes, bands like:

Opeth
Arsis
Threat Signal
Electro Quarterstaff
Demons and Wizards
3 Inches of Blood
Kamelot
Charlie Dominici
Derek Sherinian
As well as other bands that aren't metal

I've also found merit in death metal, and vocal styles that i previously shunned, as shown in Opeth, Arsis, and Threat Signal. I now officially call myself a fan of those bands.

That's what happened to me about a year and a half ago, Helloween. The progressive elements of Opeth (<3 Opeth) were able to make me accept death metal style vocal style, whereas I would immediately dismiss them in the past. Since then I've been brought to a point where I can KIND of like Dying Fetus, but not that much. Arsis is pretty cool, which reminds me,

If anyone digs the kind of progressive/power/symphonic/neoclassical style that Symphony X is in, I recommend you guys check out Suspyre - their second album just came out and it's pretty awesome. Noah Martin - the bassist for Arsis played on the last album.

I started out listening to Mercenary about two years ago. First band with growled vocals I listened to and loved. I'd say they were kind of a gateway in that I now like Vader, Arsis, The Project Hate MCMXCIX alongside catchier stuff like In Flames and Soilwork.

I have yet to hear anything other than Constant Motion off of it, but even that makes me quiver with anticipation of the sheer awesomeness of the whole thing.

It happened the same way for me.

See, I like when Symphony X does heavy, but not so much Dream Theater. Constant Motion and Dark Eternal Night don't do it for me at all. They left me very unreceptive to the second half of the album for the first spin. I think I'll make myself an edited version of the latter which includes only the solo stuff. The ballads are not as catchy as Octavarium's, but they're definitely deeper. Prophets of War is no Sacrificed Sons, nor does In the Presence compare to Octavarium, although they're still quite good.

Myung and Portnoy are in good form, Petrucci is perfect as usual, Labrie was spot on, and Rudess really shined. But overall, I think Octavarium is stronger. I mean, we know they're fantastic musicians, but accessibility and songwriting are important too, and I liked every track on that album.


Devy's Ziltoid is a real treat--perhaps not his strongest musically, but cohesive and fun.

Well, there's a point where it's simply a difference in a matter of taste. Whereas you like almost all of Octavarium, I am not so much in favor of the accessible ballad songs (tracks 2-4). It seems Train of Thought has often been a fissure in the opinion of Dream Theater fans - loved or hated. I personally, really like the album and their moderations between cleaner, slow stuff and technical heavy stuff.

I think it's interesting to note that the two songs that have the most electronic influence on Octavarium and Systematic Chaos are both number six.

Again, as far as thinking Octavarium is a stronger, more cohesive album is mostly due to individual taste, but I'm not sure if they'll ever top the song Octavarium itself, which is just purely genius. As far as what you said about the individual song comparisons - I agree. Sacrificed Sons is better than Prophets (lyrically and otherwise, but I never thought LaBrie to be a stellar songwriter anyway) and while Presence is no Octavarium, I still find it to be a fucking awesome song.

Yeah I really dig Mercenary. I've been listening to the Hours That Remain quite frequently.

I agree, I would never suggest otherwise.

Train of Thought is like most of their albums for me. The last two tracks on that album are brilliant, a couple others are decent, and the rest I never listen to. Octavarium stands alone in the fact that I can listen to every song on it. At the risk of making no sense, I have to say that Octavarium is their best overall, but if I could only have one album I don't think it would be my pick.

Recent haul from the used CD stores around here:

- Iron Clad - Lost in a Dream: traditional heavy metal from Belgium, with some medieval influences. Günther from Ancient Rites on vocals.
- Mötley Crüe - Too Fast For Love: solid debut, though not quite as good as Shout at the Devil. But early Crüe was among the top for cheesy 80's rocking metal.
- Bruce Dickinson - Accident of Birth: about time, I know. ;)
- Orplid - s/t: cool neofolk, reminds me of The Moon Lay Hidden Beneath a Cloud and Der Blutharsch, with hints of Graveland (minus the metal) at times for some reason.
- Sol Invictus - more badass neofolk. The Devil's Steed: never, ever expected to find any such CD in any local store. Now if I could only find Lex Talionis and In the Rain... :(

Hey, three metal out of five ain't bad. :D

Morrigan: What do you think of Current 93?

Hey look I'm derailing a metal thread