Messages

I'm getting familiar with it now after not being able to stop listening to the fucking thing all day.

I'm immediately obsessed with, and fascinated by this album.

There's so much going on but it's never contrived. Everything has a purpose and you can't just dip in and listen to one section.

I can't praise it enough. It keeps dragging me back in.

It's been on a loop here pretty much all day. A sublime piece of work.

I've been listening to this all day. Amazing. Morbid Angel meets 70s prog.

Saw it earlier. Its tough to watch alright. I hope the man gets the help he needs. Clearly he's not in a good place mentally.

Atrocity - Blut

Hallucinations was incredible, blistering early technical death metal. They followed up with Todessensucht, a genuine death metal masterpiece.

Then on Blut, Atrocity lived up to their moniker musically with an overflowing toilet bowl of chugga chugga shouty guy nonsense about being a vampire.

They have stayed consistently terrible ever since, across decades, a variety of different styles and genres including returning to death metal.

Two fucking savage albums, then shit forever.

Sabbat - Mourning Has Broken.

A steaming pile of dogshit.

Really strong track. The last couple of albums have been decent enough if a bit forgettable.
I miss fast Darkthrone though.

I can't recommend Deathrow highly enough.
Riders of Doom and Raging Steel are fantastic albums.

Then they followed up with this absolute fucking masterpiece of progressive technical thrash metal.

Vektor lifted a riff or two from this beauty.

A lot of the essential stuff has been already mentioned.
Assassin, Exhumer, Poison (Germany), Morbid Saint, Bulldozer, Rigor Mortis, Whiplash and Protector are worth checking out.

You should do a trawl through the Noise and SPV 80's releases. The home of that Teutonic thrash sound.

https://metalinjection.net/news/pestilence-defends-their-ai-album-cover-is-wrong?fbclid=IwAR1Gq05TIxI96E3v239c6g83bZ-XoLFRtXtvFtSJlDB2PmBAxcCLhkaWsFw

On a related note. I don't have any particularly strong feelings about the artwork either way, it's nothing amazing but certainly there has been worse stuff over the years. In particular I'm thinking of the late 90's emergence of that Dave McKean style of artwork which seemed to be everywhere at the time.

Pestilence released a track from this and the artwork issue will be the least of their worries. The production is shockingly bad.
Sounds like a demo with a drum machine.

Mamelli will no doubt tell everyone they are wrong.

Not very controversial.

The heavy metal comb over.

Long hair and perpetual hat combination due to having a Klingon hairline.

Tom G Warrior is the poster boy for this nonsense.

Lads stop FFS.

Low hanging fruit but Morbid Angel Illud David's Anus surely deserves a mention.

It's arguable that FFTTF was their last good album with Heretic being a weak and forgettable follow up with cardboard production, but Illud is in a league of its own when it comes to being unlistenable horseshit.

Kingdoms Distained is hookless muck and confirms that the MA tank is completely dry.

A festival announcement on how the promoter intends to lose money holding a 2 day event in the middle of nowhere, with free entry as long as you sign an insurance waiver cause they can't afford to pay for it, and 3 grand is as high as they can go, is brilliant marketing in fairness.

This is also a good draw for any bands thinking of piling into a van and getting lost for a few hours before finding the remote location in Roscommon where this is conveniently being hosted.

On a related theme, I see Watchtower, the ones who really opened the door to the technical stuff for me, are going to play in Germany in October. Might have to do the needful 😂

And a Sprial Architect reunion wouldn't be a bad thing either.

Twisted Into Form are recording a new one. That's 3/4 of a Spiral Architect album.

Probably an unpopular opinion, but I think Renewal is Kreator's best album. Less unpopular would be Agent Orange being Sodom's best.

I agree with you, Renewal is the best thing they ever did. There's nothing quite like it, either by them or anyone else. It was amazing to read, in the liner notes of the recent reissue, that part of the reason was that Frank refused to tune down. He plays in standard tuning throughout so was forced to play something different to Mille almost all the time which, now that I know about it, makes so much sense why that album sounds the way it does. I love their earlier stuff but Renewal just has a unique vibe to it which they have never bettered. SodomI can take or leave. Agent Orange was ok but they're nothing special to me.

Another obsession of mine... Cynic. I first read about them in a Metal Forces pre-Human interview with Chuck, where he discussed the Spiritual Healing lineup falling apart and how he had gotten the best musicians in Florida to record this new, aggressive music. I was intrigued. As a result, I picked up Testimony of the Ancients and Unquestionable Presence, too, on the strength of them featuring one of the Cynic lads, based on the logic that "if they're good enough for Chuck..." These were the pre-internet days where you couldn't just listen to anything, anytime. Many purchases were made based on something I read, word of mouth, thanks lists or even someone, in a band I liked, wearing a band t-shirt in a picture. Human, UP and TOTA are still among my favourite albums to this day. I still remember the bitterness of opening the inlay to Individual Thought Patterns and finding out Reinert and Masvidal weren't on it. In fact, I'm not sure I ever got over that 😂

When Focus eventually came out, it was like nothing I had ever heard and the Cynic associated albums were among my main listening material through the dark musical wastelands of the mid-to-late 90's. Since then, I have continued to pick up anything featuring any of them. As the internet became a thing, finding out about Imperial Doom and On The Seventh Day... and being able to get those CDs on e-bay, learning about Portal and Gordian Knot, then Aeon Spoke, the joy of it all. That fucking Aghora album, when I found out about it, was like a light in the dark. The Cynical Sphere became invaluable and great to see there were other people out there who shared the obsession.

The reunion has delivered in spades and I'll pick up whatever comes out, be it new stuff or remixes, even though the post-Reinert and Malone years just won't be the same. Cynic is essential.

This is all fact. I also have a 30 year long obsession with Cynic. Been listening to Refocus all week.
Even more obsessed with Atheist. I became a bassist because of Piece of Time.
They're touring the US together right now playing my dream gig every night. No European dates sadly.

Also Renewal is the best Kreator album.