Don’t tease me with DT as they aren’t coming around here this time. I was seriously considering buying tickets for the Tampa show as Orphaned Land was a night behind them. Good thing I never found a decently priced flight as we would have been down there during Irma.
I really dug Insomnium. I hadn’t heard of them before and they put on a good show. Lacuna Coil was a bit dull and Epica wasn’t bad.
Sadly the Richmond date I have tickets for is one of about 3 dates on the tour where Insomnium isn’t playing support to Epica and Lacuna Coil. I actually really liked Epica back a couple of years ago when they toured here, so I’m sorry to miss them, but knocking out Insomnium in the same year as Dark Tranquility and Amon Amarth sort of completes my current trinity of Scandinavian Melodeath masters, so I am pretty pleased with that :-D
Saw Apocalyptica tonight, the Plays Metallica By Four Cellos tour. That was some funky shit, and I loved it. It’s fun enough to listen to the studio album (including the newly remastered version), but seeing it live is another animal. The first half of the show was just the cellos, then in the second half they added drums. The crowd was kinda tame as you might expect from a show with “cello” in the title, but by the end everyone was on their feet and really into it. I particularly liked “Seek and Destroy” but really everything was great. Highly recommended if the tour comes near your area.
Also, I spotted this on FB. Probably too far to go, no matter how awesome the lineup :(
Evergrey is a very underrated band. The other day, in the ‘make a playlist’ thread, they got a nod from me. Very powerful music.
Re: Dark Tranquility - Damage Done was one of my most repeated albums for quite some time.
I’ve been mostly listening to Galneryus. Ultimate Sacrifice is out at the end of the month.
Ravage re-recorded their great first album, Spectral Rider.
Which I’m torn about, since the production was real bad on that early album - but it also had a certain character, which I feel this messes with. Any Ravage is good though while we wait for new material. :)
For the uninitiated, it’s a traditional heavy metal with a bit of the speed thrown in for good measure:
Ravage - Return of the Spectral Rider
Blind Guardian are prepping to release a full set of remastered CDs from their Century Media era on their current label Nuclear Blast. Which is cool, but I’ve got all the physical discs already.
But the main upshot here is that now, all Blind Guardian albums are finally on Spotify/Play Music/etc. for streaming!
Looks like some regional bonus tracks (e.g., the various version of “Harvest of Sorrow” are entirely left off of A Night at the Opera), and there’s some debate about the remastering choices (guitars are tuned waaay up in the mix on the first few albums, for instance), but as a longtime fan, it’s great to have these more easily accessible :)
That’s great! I had already uploaded the couple albums I owned, but the rest of their catalog was one of the more glaring holes in Play Music.
So this may not be the right thread necessarily but…
The Darkness are back! Pinewood Smile arrives next Friday. :) God I love this band! All The Pretty Girls is my favorite so far, but these are all great!
They’re coming to Charlotte in April of next year and I’m about 70% sure I’m gonna go.
Speaking of shows, I saw Insomnium tear up Richmond, VA’s Canal Club a couple of nights ago with two friends, one of whom was James Peterson, ex bassist for the very awesome Proliferation.
James is about 7 years my junior and one of the most passionate, dedicated metal fans I’ve ever known; we got to talking on the wall of another musician friend, Jon Teachey of WIlderun, and wound up friending each other on FB and talking more and more over the last few months.
He’s a huge Insomnium fan for two main reasons. Their latest, Winter’s Gate, is is favorite viking metal album of all time, and because their track “Ephemeral” inspired a very deeply meaningful moment in his emotional life. So while they’re on tour all over the US with Epica and Lacuna Coil this fall, they have a handful of headlining dates, including Richmond, so James drove up from Atlanta to meet me and my pal Briony in Raleigh, then we carpooled the rest of the way up to Richmond.
It was a fantastic show wherein one of the openers gave out free kazoos, another forgot how to tune guitars, and Insomnium played a blistering 1.5-hour set that included the full album of Winter’s Gate and a ton more amazing tracks, including “Ephemeral.” We all loved it, but James damn near lost his mind like six times during the show.
It was a great night and an awesome opportunity to meet one of my favorite metal buddies. Be sure that when his solo project, Spectria, finally finishes recording and mixing that I’m gonna link y’all to that shit :)
Surprisingly decent opener who gave out kazoos!
I ended up buying a few Insomnium albums after seeing them.
I am not sure if these guys were posted, but looks like I will be seeing them in November. I was planning on just catching Allegaeon for a hometown show, but who could say no to death metal and violins. I guess I missed them last year when they came through Colorado based on this video.
@ArmandoPenblade Okay, I absolutely loved the music on that Insomnium “While We Sleep” video you posted. Actually, the video was pretty good too. Still trying to get used to death metal vocals, but they were really dialed down in that song. Again though, that music was awesome.
There’s quite a few Insomnium tracks with a mixture of clean and harsh vocals, esp. later in their career, but I absolutely agree with you on their music being incredible. There’s so much expressiveness and emotion in the guitar work; I can absolutely see why my buddy James was so overwhelmed at the show :)
My favorite “part” of Winter’s Gate takes a little while to ramp up, but it’s just gorgeous:
(“Winter’s Gate” is meant to be played as a single 40-minute track, but most streaming services subdivide it into about 7 parts)
@Zephyr, thanks for the heads up on Ne Obliviscaris! Looks like they’ll be a couple hours away in late November; if I’m not totally concerted out by then, I’ll definitely try to check it out :-D
Going to see Mastodon tonight, but tbh, I’m way more excited about their first opener, Russian Circles, who I got into a decade+ ago in college. Great hard post rock sorta vibe.
I completely slept on Oceans of Slumber when @Thraeg name-dropped 'em in his end-of-year lists, but a buddy of mine coaxed me into 'em with their excellent “Nights in White Satin” cover. This is some ludicrously good shit, and vocalist Cammie Gilbert’s vocal tone is fucking gorgeous. Great mixture of alt-rock, technical death metal, atmospheric black metal, and fuck-knows-what-else.
Because sometimes you don’t want something new:
This week, with lots of training work to do, this has been my soundtrack. Devin is one of my 5 favorite musicians, and he puts on a hell of a live show.
Probably my favourite Insomnium song is “In the Groves of Death.” It is one of those songs that highlights the beauty of melodic death metal. Also from the same album, “Mortal Share” has an incredible intro for one, and all round good song. For an Insomnium song that is less harsh with the death metal vocals, have a listen to “Lose to Night.”
Thumbs-up on the mentions of Insomnium and Oceans of Slumber!
Here’s my regularly scheduled delivery of farm-fresh metal recommendations:
Thraeg’s Albums of the Month for September 2017
Winner (tie):
It feels like a copout not to pick a single winner, but these two absolutely towered over the rest of the month for me. @craigm is absolutely right about Threshold’s whole catalog being worthwhile – I’ve gone back and checked out a bunch of it and it’s great, but the new one is still my favorite so far. And Archspire is as tech-death as you can get, which is normally a bit out of my wheelhouse, but it just really worked for me.
Archspire - Relentless Mutation
Threshold - Legend of the Shires
Also Noteworthy:
Caligula’s Horse - In Contact
Galderia - Return of the Cosmic Men
Twelve Boar - No Forgiveness
Xanthochroid - Of Erthe and Axen Act I
Squalus - The Great Fish
Ufomammut - 8
Chelsea Wolfe - Hiss Spun
Cradle of Filth - Cryptoriana: The Seductiveness of Decay
Woe Unto Me - Among the Lightened Skies the Voidness Flashed
Paradise Lost - Medusa
For my September, apart from the rolicking blackened death of the Belphegor album posted earlier I found Arckanum - Den Förstfödde most interesting:
so fucking good
Looking forward to listening to the rest of the suggestions this month.
For the first time in about 2 months straight, I’m not in concert-prep mode for an impending show (I’m not likely to make it out to anything other than a couple of local band metal shows at the bar near my house until October 23rd’s Gost + Dance with the Dead slaserwave double-header), so I can actually listen to current shit for once!
