The Official Metal Appreciation Thread®

After listening to the new Amon Amarth album a couple of times, I can safely say that, yep, it's an Amon Amarth album.

It's largely fairly predictable, but I'm enjoying it a bit more than Berserker or Jomsviking. Some songs are a bit closer to the With Oden On Our Side, Twilight Of The Thunder God kinda mid point in the career, where you have definite NWOBHM influences but they're just a step back from the big, quasi-power metal kind of moments.

Those moments still appear - Saxons and Vikings features Biff Byford of Saxon and his vocals both make it a stand out track, and also sound like something Avantasia might do - and I largely enjoy those moments. But it's maybe just a tad darker than the last couple of albums (I don't want to overstate that though, it's still very much in keeping with their sound).

I do like the production a lot though, some reviews find it a bit clean but I just really like how every instrument is actually audible in the mix. Andy Sneap seems to know how to make the band sound their best, as the albums of their's he produced all sound great.

You know where you with Amon Amarth, and you'll know whether it's worth listening to the new album. For me it was worth it.

Amon Amarth are the perfect example of streaming being great as a consumer. Listen to it, enjoy it, forget it immediately and not be annoyed you spent a tenner on something very middling

New Soilwork a week tomorrow, and then new Machine Head the Friday after that.

As seems to be the new way of doing things, a bunch of songs from each have already been released.

Slipknot and LoG are another two big hitters in Autumn - it's a big year for established mainstream-y bands.

The Halo Effect EP is pretty good recently. It's Mikael Stanne fronting most of the good members of what was In Flames before they jumped the shark (Jesper, Daniel Svensson and Peter Iwers) plus an earlier IF guitarist. It really just shows far IF did fall after Come Clarity. I think a full length release is due.

I'm off to see Cancer Bats on the 3rd and I'm excited! Their new(ish) album is worth a listen if you like that kind of thing.

So Machine Head were the secret band on the second stage at Bloodstock. That was pretty special, although the setlist was about as bad as it could possibly have been there were still some great tracks (Imperium, Ten Ton Hammer, Aesthetics of Hate) and the crowd loved it. Don't think anyone could quite believe it when they closed without Davidian though.

Sylosis were a highlight as well, easy to forget how damn good they are. I reckon they could be headlining that festival in a few years if they can rebuild momentum.

And Gwar... blimey what a show, and actually the songs were decent too. Keen to watch the documentary about them on Shudder.

Sylosis have never quite had a wow factor for me. They're really good in basically every aspect but there's some kind of X factor that they're missing for some reason that keeps them from soaring compared to bands in their ballpark like Revocation.

Still rather listen to them than MH though. They've got a couple of good records (Blackening & Locust) but Robb Flynn is such a fucking poser and whiner that I just can't listen to them.

From an old album by Klabautmann. Most of their albums are Black Metal, but outside of "The Old Chamber" they are all fairly interesting mixes beyond that.

It was the album Operation: Mindcrime for me.

I'll always remember Sepultura - Necromancer as the song that got me into metal. I downloaded it from Napster after a mate learned I was playing a necromancer in this new game called Diablo II and said they had a song with that name. My innocent little brain had never heard anything like it. And I was hooked. 🤘

Vulgar Display of Power was the first metal album I bought for myself - after seeing This Love on Beavis & Butthead - but my dad was a big Sabbath guy from the original Ozzy days and I was already listening to Offspring, RHCP, Nirvana etc from school friends’ older cooler brothers.

On Machine Head and Robb Flynn: I still think Burn My Eyes sounds as fresh and intense as when I first heard it. I think there is good stuff on More Things Change, Burning Red and Ashes of Empires but there’s a very distinct vibe that as much fun as he appears to be having that he’s never gotten over the fact that his band didn’t became the next Metallica.

Like Burn My Eyes and Korn by Korn came out in the same year from more or less the same region but obviously MH were setting themselves up to be peers of Pantera and Slayer. Then you look at Roadrunner in the mid-90s and you’ve got Sepultura, Fear Factory, Biohazard, Type O Negative then a few years later Slipknot. The reception Burn My Eyes got and coming from his days in Vio-lence I think Robb saw MH as the next band who could take real metal to arena level and be the breakout band of that group - and to be fair they were the most exciting new band when they turned up sounding like that in the middle of the MTV grunge/alt rock days.

And also, you listen to any big commercial metal band like a Killswitch Engage, Lamb of God, Five Finger Death Punch even up to a Slipknot and the basis of all of their sounds is what Machine Head established on that first album.

I think that urge to get big and the vibe Robb gives of being a very enthusiastic fanboy is ultimately what kills it for them. Burning Red isn’t such a radical departure in retrospect but its also the first big sign of him making music inspired by whats going on around him, which is fine to an extent. What comes next though, is album after album of trying to recapture being the cutting edge next big thing but always being very obviously influenced by sounds of the actual latest new bands and always looking behind the curve. Max Cavalera did the same thing with Soulfly for years until settling into accepting their role as backing band for his legacy act.

Would it make sense if I said Robb gives off a similar enthusiastic puppy fanboy energy to the one Angry Joe does in his game and movie reviews?

I happen to like something in all of Machine Head's catalogue, even the likes of Supercharger, and I think Catharsis has some decent enough stuff on it, as well as some, errm, misjudged moments.

The More Things Change is my least player album by them, I think it's a bit dour.

They've always been great live when I've seen them.

I think they suffer badly from 'CD era' bloat, in that the albums are always designed to fill the full running time of a CD. Bloodstone and Diamonds is a great example album - there's some fantastic music on that but maybe a full third of it is a miss. It could be a brilliant 45 minute album if cut down.

I find Flynn a bit weird in that he tries to promote himself as woke and right-on, but then rants about complaining fans being **** suckers and implying them to 'eat a bag of *****' and spectacularly missing the homophobia of those phrases.

The anti-trump Billy Bragg song on Catharsis ('Bastards') was his lowest moment. The sentiment was absolutely fine but the delivery was HORRIBLE and worse still if you look up the 'slam poetry' reading he did of the lyrics. Of course it immediately wrote off half the fan base in the US which was never huge in the first place.

However, he can and does write riffs and songs that slam harder than many of their peers.

A criticism I'd level at them since The Blackening is the kind of 'Trivium effect' - having to shoehorn in the SOARING CHORUS and the back to back harmonised guitar solos at every opportunity.

I think losing Dave McClain was a blow too, because he was one of those rare drummers in metal who had a signature sound, pitched between Vinny Paul and Igor Cavalera I thought, sounded like a train.

Sorry for the poorly structured rambling.

I am looking forward to the new album, I just think it's sad what's happened to them.

That Covid/in-between period when it became the Rob and Jared show didn't produce very strong music IMO. At the time Flynn decided he was done with albums and would just release tracks done with session drummers. There was this, a swear-y crap one that actually had a half decent riff, and that Circle the Drain, and they were all uninspired to me.

I think that video with Jesse Leach is a bit cringey with all that gesticulation and obvious remote filming.

The new album is already half-released by drip-feed and sounds very decent, big improvement I think. Somewhere between the better moments of Bloodstone, the directness of Locust and the technicality of the Blackening.

I liked The Blackening a lot, Unto The Locust not so much then the next thing I heard musically was that awfully embarrassing 'DIEMOTHERFUCKERDIEMOTHERFUCKERDIEMOTHERFUCKERDIE' song.