I wonder if Tank knew something that the rest of us didn't in 1983. One doesn't expect the band who was introduced to the world playing nasty metal one step away from Venom to start with ambient electronic music. Imagine picking this up in '83, expecting something raw and getting something that sounds like Tangerine Dream. It of course goes into something metal, but it still seems at odds with their most popular image.
The strange synths starting the album also come with a ... read more

Even at first glance, Gloomy Reflections seems odd for a band attached to the NWOTHM movement. One half is from longtime The Wizar'd guitarist and the other is an apparent mainstay of the Tasmania punk scene and dungeon synth artist. Why are these two people getting together to make...heavy metal/progressive rock?
As could be expected, these guys have an odd sound. While the music is clearly using modern production techniques and things you can only do with modern amps, it's still ... read more

As I write this, I have a list of random albums I go through, and this year I'm trying to get through 52 albums from 2025. I also occasionally have trouble with earwax blocking my hearing. When I first fired up this album, it sounded like I was having that trouble. I could feel it in my ears. I turned the CD off, then listened to something else to confirm that I was not in fact, going deaf or something.
While this is a one man black metal act, this does not necessarily register as the kind ... read more

Over the years Astral Doors has seemingly managed to obtain a small fanbase of people who find their style of power metal tinged heavy metal appealing. I mean, I assume so. I've never seen much praise for them. For my two cents, I've only ever listened to Jerusalem, and that felt like enough for me for a while.
Requiem of Time fits neatly into a modernized style of '80s heavy metal/hard rock. Modern recording techniques, but still classic songwriting. Dio is the most obvious ... read more

Budgie is such a weird band in historical context. While there have certainly been some metal songs at this point, they tend to trend towards the lighter side of things. Nobody really seemed to have the riffing and the heaviness Black Sabbath had. Budgie follows that format, albeit in comparison to Sabbath's strangeness, these guys feel more mundane.
To start with, vocalist Burke Shelley is a great deal more mundane as far as vocalists go. He's your basic hippy with a high-pitched ... read more

At first glance, Light Will Consume Us All is a nearly unremarkable album. On Metal Archives, the band is listed as doom/sludge, and the similar artists tab lists many, many other doom/sludge bands who form a similar niche that I have little interest in. There is something slightly remarkable about Chrch though, it's that they have a female singer. This is unusual for a band in this niche, does the music follow up on this?
Well, yes, and that sludge part is somewhat misleading. It takes a ... read more

A weird whistling sound. A man screaming like he stubbed his toe. These sounds proceed the music of this album and it does not give confidence. For such a respected album, I'm surprised at the disconnect the music has starting off. You get a guy wailing over some heavy sounding music and it is such a goofy sound. He eventually gets serious, but it's such a poor introduction.
Once the music starts, it gets pretty interesting. Musically, there's quite a journey going on here. A ... read more

Estuarine is described as experimental death metal on many websites, and I can't help but think at first that this was born out of a desire to be odd rather than resulting out of musical intrigue. This isn't true, but the opening section does give that impression. It is not constructed out of elements that work together, just ones that were fitted together, but as the album continues, there is method to the madness.
Now, the most unusual part of the band's sound is, well, the ... read more

Vendel answers the question nobody ever asked before, what if Judas Priest was a doom metal band? A simplification, but close enough to understand what these guys are about. Another simplification would be to call them another one of these epic heavy/doom metal bands that take epic metal and it with doom metal that seem to be a thing now.
If this sounds odd, it's because it is. I understand there's probably a virtue to this, but Priest generally works when they have energy to them, ... read more

Excursion Demise is one of those albums that wants to put its fingers in both of the cooler styles of thrash's pies while not really committing to either. In this case, brutal thrash on one and tech thrash on the other. In theory this could be very nice, but this is dragged down by a few factors.
To start with, the production job is on the softer side, which wouldn't hurt a tech band, but when it goes more brutal it doesn't really work to the strengths of such an assault but ... read more

It's always felt disappointing that the Floor Jensen Nightwish albums have never really caught my interest. Her being in the band always felt like something that should be good...yet wasn't. The direction the Olzon years were going in was pretty good, and somehow when Jensen joined, despite something that should have made them better, they just lost most of what they had. This one was at least interesting enough to warrant continued interest.
While I wouldn't say this album is ... read more

Valkyria is one of those weird foreign thrash metal bands. I've seen many things said about them. Prog thrash, tech thrash and thrash/speed. Yet of these, I would say the most important aspect of the band's sound is none of them. Instead, it's a little cheap keyboard making symphonic sounds that fulfills this band's sound as a not quite symphonic thrash metal band.
I say not quite, because the symphonic parts are sporadic, but their presence elevates this album from being a ... read more

It's odd how many tech thrash bands have made a conscious effort to copy Voivod over the years. It's not like it's a negative thing, they used it as a starting ground for amazing things. I just wouldn't think of Voivod as influential off-hand. It makes me wonder if you can divide the genre into camps based on whether they owe more to Voivod or to Watchtower.
The album starts off quite strong with Die By My Hand, while it's aggressiveness and technical prowness is ... read more

I've never really listened to much Sepultura. I've listened to most of the albums from the classic period, and while I've liked some, I've never really revisited them. They're certainly one of the oddest groups, going from near death metal to nu metal sellouts is one heck of a career trejectory. I haven't heard anything since Roots or so, but people love these guys again, so clearly they did something right.
What surprised me when I first listened to this album was ... read more

I blame Atheist for giving me such high expectations for tech death metal. While there are many good tech death bands, few can match what this album accomplishes; and none can match the elegant simplicity of the intro to Mother Man. In ten seconds we get the bass leading, then a surprisingly simple guitar riff, and finally the focus is on the drums. Each part in harmony, creating a whole that is much more than it seems. It's rare an album that can show exactly how well it works in ... read more

The first couple of times I listened to this, I didn't really get much out of it. Do I still like epic doom metal, I thought to myself?
But as I listened to more of the album, it struck me that my problem wasn't me, it was the album. It's not exactly epic doom metal, at least not as I recognize it. It's not epic doom metal, it's doom metal with epic metal attached. It's a doom metal album with a strong Manilla Road influence, and I don't think that combination ... read more

Novembre is one of those bands I can't actually recall, but sounds like one I've probably encountered in passing. Anathema in the suggested bands on M-A, probably vaguely popular enough that I've seen them without really knowing what it is.
The vocalist and some of the earlier songs really reminded me of the sort of vaguely metal alt rock that seemed to fill pop music during the decade this was released. It's the clean vocalist who really sells it; He's one of those ... read more

If nothing else, Sir Lord Baltimore is not content to sit on their laurels since Kingdom Come. A lot of bands, in so short a time, would release something similar to the last album, but this is not the self-titled, no sir, this is something different. At least for them, in general this sounds more like a typical rock album of the time.
To start with there's the epic Man from Manhattan. It's not bad, but it isn't that interesting either. It strikes me as unfocused, and in some ... read more

Paranoid is more what I expect out of a Black Sabbath album, but still finds ways to be odd in retrospect. The sort of thing that reminds you that this is still really before metal is metal as we know it. We might owe heaviness to Sabbath, but in many ways it just isn't what we expect of metal.
Take War Pigs. There's nothing weird about War Pigs, right? Wrong. No one outside of a progressive or technical band would make anything like War Pigs. Metal bands don't devote sections of ... read more

Back in the day I used to think quite highly of this album compared to it's predecessors and successors. I can't see why now. Gone is the power part of the equation that was so great about Oceanborn, yet it doesn't quite embrace the more fully symphonic sound that the Olzon-era would become. Instead, it's just sort of awkwardly sitting in '00s chug.
I daresay that if it was someone else who made this album, it would be a lot more controversial at best, outright hated at ... read more