Recommend me some quality Metal

I’m on my phone, and short on time. To be brief, like a lot of bands, early is good, but don’t start at the beginning (Show no Mercy, Hell Awaits), production on both is poor. Start with Reign in Blood, South of Heaven, and Seasons in the Abyss (my personal favorite).

To hear modern Slayer at their best, listen to Christ Illusion or World Painted Blood.

There are tons of great tracks on other albums, but 12 studio LPs plus live and cover albums… yea.

  1. The Antichrist (only song from the debut album!?)
  2. Dead Skin Mask (their ‘radio’ song)

Then they end with classic back catalog:
17-21 Hell Awaits, South of Heaven, Raining Blood, Chemical Warfare, Angel of Death.

Most of the other stuff I’m not really into. I’ve got a huge soft-spot for Show No Mercy, it’s pretty much Slayer’s version of Kill Em All, thrashy and catchy.

Thank you both; that’s very helpful :-D

I was at Hyper Japan yesterday, spent the weekend looking up Japanese bands mentioned, and some time on the JPU stall. As a result I’ve splashed out on some new CDs.

I’ve never been a fan of clean singing in metal, especially with male/western singers, to the point that I don’t really listen to it, even though i love the guitar work/melodies, especially in the power metal world, stuff like Firewind, and I just cringe and die when i hear Dragonforce lyrics. Also in the West the female singers on metal bands tend to be a bit operatic so I’ve rarely ventured into Scandinavia on that front.

What I’ve now discovered is a whole genre of Japanese girl metal bands which combine the best of both worlds. Yay.

and the added bonus of not having to watch some unwashed hairy blokes in the vids.

Aldious

and yeah, Japanese Metal Elsa is very… watchable.

Mary’s Blood

I may well be ever so slightly obsessed with Saki now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jap8hWAX6VU

Band-Maid are more hard rock, but probably getting the most play time on my ipod at the moment. There was a maid cafe at Hyper Japan, so I’m an expert on Japanese maids.

Bridear are bit more metalcore and technical.

Guitarist Misa is fab

and Cyntia

and hey, unlike Babymetal you get to enjoy Japanese metal without feeling bad about venturing into the disturbing world of exploited idols.

Some of those visual kei blokes could be pretty feminine. I was a bit sad moving away from New York and missing X-Japan’s limited US tour a few years ago.

I do like the Bridear videos. Not much of a metalcore guy, but I like the music.

I’m really looking forward to digging into what you shared up there, @playingwithknives. . . at least after Thursday’s Behemoth/Lamb of God/Slayer show :-D

That said, the new Arch Enemy is pretty fuckin’ decent, I got to say, and adds some new twists to their formula (at least from my perspective):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lk2-bgwA0Ro

{Clenches fists, holds both in the air.}

“We are one together as one” {repeat for 8 albums}

Never stopped me religiously buying every Arch Enemy album on release mind you. Love Ammotts work.

One more that popped up whilst I left youtube autoplaying j-metal.

Nice sweep arrangements on the solos.

Trying to find some albums, but according to Encylopedia Metallum the vast majority of their albums are “Touhou arrangement albums” which seems to be some kind of indie/fan made thing? Any weebos want to enlighten me on what that is?

Wagakki Band aren’t purely metal, there’s all sorts of tempos and non-palm muted stuff, but they seem to be as near to Eluveitie as I could find in the folk metal side of things. Indeed I pretty much discovered most of the stuff above coming in from the folk metal angle as I was also looking at Chinese folk metal over the weekend. (so much more than Tengger Cavalry and Cthonic) and ended up following various playlists and recommends to find this and the JPU Records bands. There’s some interesting Wagakki Band stuff on youtube. The traditional dress and imagery used in the vids is great.

These are the best vids I found on the Chinese side of things , an arrangement of “Sun Quan the Emperor / Yuquantianxia” (no idea what its really called) a vocaloid hit in China which is very catchy.

Flute shredding

The actual song with a Beijing student doing his guitar thing

Why whats this in front of me?

It’s the new Wintersun album! The Forest Sessions.

Not Time II, but I’m sure this will get just as much play as Time did. I think Sons of Winter and Stars was my most listened to track over the last few years. It’s classic Jari Maenpaa. A concept album with 5 epic 15 minute tracks with a Finnish guy singing about forests and weather and his usual wall of sound multi-layered extravaganza.

I still swing towards the sound of his earlier stuff on Ensiferum, and stuff like ‘Beautiful Death’ on the first Wintersun. ‘Time I’ was a little too orchestrally overengineered for my tastes, but I will certainly be checking out the new one though! Once it arrives on Google Music…


For those of the Bathory/Epic Viking persuasion, the new Ereb Altor album 'Ulfven' also landed the other day:

I’ve been going through some of these suggestions, thanks @playingwithknives for the ideas! Spotify suggested this also:

Melodic power metal. Rie aka Suzaku has been around a while, discography since 2008. For a while she was a one-woman show, now playing with Saori Saito on vocals.

Oh, and apparently her sister is a badass. Female MMA fighter who says she uses her sister’s songs as walk-up music.

I am slowly making way through Wintersun’s latest, The Forest Seasons, which is obnoxiously not going to be on any streaming services for a year or more. But hey, the digital edition’s not that expensive and the vinyl looks sexy as fuck, so. . . make the investment?

It’s very, very good so far :-D

Looking for the credits made me laugh. Drums, bass, lead, rhythm, keyboards, solo vocal, production, engineering, writing, arrangements: Jari Maenpaa. If he could clone himself and didn’t need a choir it was be him alone.

He didn’t paint the album cover? Unimpressed. ;)

Fen’s latest, Winter, is pretty gobsmackingly fantastic.

Instant purchase. I am glad this thread exists or I would have missed another great album. Hopefully he has a better backup system now.

Woohoo! Glad you’re diggin it :-D


So as not to continue polluting the RP1 thread, I am just gonna drop more cheeseball female-fronted faux metal on @stusser in here, instead. . .


Unrelated (kinda related), but for reasons I cannot fathom, The Agonist, who I saw last year, covered “Take Me to Church,” so you know, there’s that:

This is my favourite album so far this year. The cover should give you a clue as to the genre. :)

No bizzare genre cross-overs, weird gimicky instruments, clean singing, or other post-nonsense here - this is a guy steadfastly playing some awesome thick, enveloping, creeping black metal.

A lengthy back catalog of good stuff too.

Svartsyn - In Death

Oh man, does @stusser have any idea what kind of Pandora’s box he’s opened there? :)

You can go up a few posts to the Japanese girl metal bands from @playingwithknives for a bunch more fun, although most of those aren’t particularly cheeseball, at least IMHO.

And last year we had all kinds of discussion about female-fronted bands, approximately around here:

By serendipitous coincidence, as I read this I happened to be listening to a band that literally named themselves after an Evanescence song.

End of the Dream – Until You Break


Or for more embarrassing catchiness at the intersection of pop and metal, how about a group with four female vocalists doing covers of mainstream radio hits?

Exit Eden - Rhapsodies in Black


Here are a few more recent releases in the ballpark that come to mind:

Cellar Darling - This Is the Sound


Blackbriar - Until Eternity


Neverlight - Nova Red


And I’ve mentioned both of these before in this thread, but for @stusser’s benefit, here are my two favorite symphonic/gothic metal releases of 2017 so far:

AfterTime - World We’ve Lost


Beyond the Black - Lost in Forever