I’ve been listening to a lot of Dark Tranquility lately. I ended up watching a video of their set at Summerbreeze this year. I have to hand it to both the crowd and the singer for what would have been a memorable final song of the set. I guess Mikael was so in the moment he ended up singing the same verse twice. These guys are a must see for me if they come to Australia one day, they look like and sound like they put on an amazing live show.
Behold the new Christ.
Love their first two alhums, the first especially. This will be an instant purchase for me.
Oooh looky here, an old favorite of mine just released a new album of their special industrial-symphonic blackened metal! This is sounding really good so far - powerful, rhythmic, melodic, revitalised.
Samael - Hegemony
https://www.sabaton.net/north-american-tour-2018-kreator/
Sabaton and Kreator doing a huge, high-production 24-date tour across the US. Including a show in downtown Raleigh. All of my hell yes.
Between this, Kamelot, Nightwish, Hammerfall, Corrosion of Conformity, and Anthrax again, 2018’s shaping up to be another great year of shows.
On that note, I went out to see Arch Enemy and Trivium last night with my constant concert companion, Briony, who’s a huge Trivium fan (and I’m pretty fuckin’ down with Arch Enemy myself and think the new Trivium release is the bee’s knees).
No pics of Trivium because the crowd was a fuckin’ murder pit and I had to bamf out a few songs in to the back to recover. I mean, I took pictures, they’re just all blurry from me getting pounded from all sides by burly Triviumbros :)
Awesome. Seeing Trivium and AE in a couple weeks. I also just bought tickets for Killthrax. I have never seen Anthrax despite being a fan since 1987 or so. Super excited!
Killthrax is a hell of a show, although I’ll admit Killswitch Engage kinda really got under my skin during their set by encouraging a female fan riding on a guy’s shoulders to flash them as “punishment” for blocking people’s view. It was super skeevy and the crowd was wayyyy too into it :(
Anthrax though? Those guys put on a motherfucking performance. When I saw Slayer this summer, those guys were just fucking machines, blasting the crowd with a 2+ hour front-and-center assault on the eardrums. Anthrax maybe didn’t show quite as much endurance or play quite as long, but had way more finesse. It was amazing.
QFT. Old? Those guys have no idea what that is.
Damn, dude, I gotta go look at tour schedules now and see if all those acts are coming to Michigan. Or book a trip to Carolina.
Those are great pics @ArmandoPenblade! And I’d definitely love to find a way to get out to see Sabaton next year.
Thraeg’s Albums of the Month for October 2017
This was a spectacular month for doom metal, whether your tastes run toward the epic (Sorcerer), the retro (Hallas, Spirit Adrift), or the crushing funeral meditations on the death of a band member (Bell Witch, Hallatar).
Winner
Sorcerer - The Crowning of the Fire King
Runners-up
Bell Witch - Mirror Reaper
Hallatar - No Stars Upon the Bridge
Hallas - Excerpts from a Future Past
Enslaved - E
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PckccxyeZVk
The King is Blind - We Are the Parasite, We Are the Cancer
Honorable Mentions
Force Majeure – The Rise of Starlit Fires
Jag Panzer - The Deviant Chord
Spirit Adrift - Curse of Conception
Ne Obliviscaris - Urn
Metalite - Heroes in Time
Omnium Gatherum - Blade Reflections (single)
Goddamn dude that’s a hell of a list. You are awesome for consistently posting lists like that here though :-D
I’ll put forward an album I’ve been a little obsessed with the last couple of days from 2017:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOWxFnhTlpg
From Cormorant’s excellent Diaspora
Wait goddammit you already got this back in September, @Thraeg :-D
Ahahaha, well, it’s good enough that I’m bumping it.
edit: Oh fuck, that “Star Rider” track from Hallas is super duper up my alley.
Glad to be of service! I’m sifting through lots of music anyway, so if that time can benefit you guys, even better!
And yes, Cormorant is awesome!
Only one day left until I can finally pick up a brand new Converge album (The Dusk in Us). It’s been 5 long years since the last one and I’m chomping at the bit.
They’ve released 4 of the upcomming tracks so far on Youtube, and I’ll include a couple of them here.
Giggity.
In which Randy has a 130-album list of stuff from 2017 to listen to, mostly from this thread, and of which he’s actually cracked open maybe 20. Fuck.
No, seriously, help
Looking at that list, I can’t help but feel the barest smidgen of responsibility for your predicament.
If I were to trim it down to the top dozen that have best held up and stuck with me, keeping me coming back for repeat listens throughout the year, it would probably be:
- Violet Cold
- Wormwood
- Fit for an Autopsy
- Archspire
- Threshold
- Galderia
- Loss
- Night Flight Orchestra
- Below
- Unleash the Archers
- White Ward
- Temple of Void
- Impure Wilhelmina
(I didn’t include the October releases because they’re too new to judge how they’ll hold up, but based on current sentiments, Sorcerer, Hallas, and Bell Witch are in the same tier.)
Also they didn’t release anything in 2017, but absolutely do not sleep on Thrawsunblat. Both those albums would be way up there on my all-time favorites list. Metacthonia is more polished and consistent all the way through, while Wanderer on the Continent of Saplings has higher highs (Bones in the Undertow, Song of the Nihilist), lower lows (Maritime Shores, Elegy Across the Silence), and the greatest emotional journey I can think of in any metal album.
Yeah, there’s a handful of pre-2017 things on there from other discussions.
I also possibly have a 200+ strong 2016 focused Word Doc in Dropbox. . .
P.S. - The Hallas album is already one of my favorites of the year. That shit is fuckin’ GOOD
Good call on this one! For whatever reason I had never checked Converge out, but I’m liking the new one a lot.
Also, one more late October release that I forgot to include is Keldian’s Darkness and Light. All the songs are good, but the Mass-Effect-inspired “Life and Death Under Strange New Suns” is the clear standout and an instant addition to my personal favorite game-based metal songs.
Here are a few more. Any other great ones out there?
Perfect article for this thread
Awakening The Abyss, the debut album from yet another Destrose offshoot, Lovebites, has kept my attention for the last few days. It’s fairly old school but enjoyable.
The new Galneryus album, Ultimate Sacrifice, is a corker. I think these guys have been my favourite in my recent delve into j-metal.
That’s a great article, nice find @playingwithknives. Like many others, I went through a “I can play in a band too” phase when I was younger (spoiler alert: we really sucked) and way the article describes the underground scene reminds me a lot of those days. Just with people who never moved on to less interesting hobbies!
“…people so entrenched in the underground scene that they understand the difference between depressive black metal and depressive suicidal black metal…” Are we sure this wasn’t @Thraeg he was talking to? :)