User Page: PowerWyrm

After the insipid "Thornography", Cradle Of Filth are back to their mid-period dark metal: this release sounds a lot like "Midian" or "Damnation and a Day". More operatic, epic and venomous as ever, the band delivers classic black metal, with the return of the orchestral interludes, choir, female backing vocals, spoken parts... if only the lead singer knew how to sing it would have been a great release, unfortunately the only thing that never changes is the horrible shrieked male vocals.

A very interesting band... Typical extreme metal, blending heavy riffing with dark melodic passages. The vocals are the usual mix of clean vocals/growls, but the originality here is that not only the band is female fronted and that the lead singer sings in french... but she also does the growls.

A compilation of instrumental tunes written for side projects... close to what has been done by Asia for their "Rare" release. Some main themes seem to show out of this quite messy release (corn field, forest, sea), and it would have been great if those were grouped in some way (more info provided about the "multi-media scoring work" would have been great too, info which was present on the "Rare Asia" release for example).

Most of the stuff here sounds a lot like TG's old work in King Crimson or the ProjeKcts, with him doing all the guitar/bass work and adding some keyboards, scarce (backing) vocals and different drummers. Overall it's a very enjoyable album that can be listened from start to end without bothering about song names, with one major exception: the pointless last track. While all other tunes range in the 1-3 minutes mark, the last instrumental lasts more than 20 minutes. And it cannot even be called music: imagine someone making some piece of chalk squeek on a black board... that's nothing compared to the torture of listening to that track... and it lasts 20 minutes!

After my review of the last Michael Kiske album, this is roughly the same concept: old songs played acoustically. Again these are among my favorite Anathema songs, but again I prefer the original versions.

An album consisting of songs written by Michael Kiske during the Helloween era and played acoustically. Though these are mostly my favorites songs from this era, the versions here aren't the same quality as the original versions... except maybe "Your Turn".

I don't know how I missed this gem when it was released two years ago... it's simply beautiful.

Globus is a project from composer and producer Yoav Goren, turning cinematic and epic soundtracks into contemporary songs. The Epicon album blends classical music (Bach, Haendel, traditional songs...) with pop and rock elements, modern vocals, choir and a full piece orchestra. The result is simply brilliant.

This could have been a great concept album about the story of a serial killer fascinated by spiders... unfortunately neither the songs nor the music did make much impact on me. Musically the album sounds mostly like the early stuff (but without the unforgettable hits from the first albums), sometimes even like the albums from the early 80s (and who remembers those?). The use of multiple songwriters didn't help here and made the songs messy... and even the lyrics are uninspired. Clearly an album for fans only...

Musically, this album sounds like the previous ones... but what has Johan Edlund done with his voice??? Sometimes he's almost growling, sometimes he uses a voice comparable to what he did for the first half of "Wildhoney", on rare occasions he uses his normal voice, but most of the time he relies on a low tone voice giving all the songs an interesting feeling. It simply feels like the band tried to make a "best of" album... but with new songs.

A strong follow up to Ghost Reveries, with the same tendencies to add more mellow passages between the extreme parts. In fact, it's the only album (except of course Damnation) that has more songs with only clean vocals than songs with growls. The music is also quite different from the Still Life - Deliverance era, with half of the band having been replaced and with the addition of a permanent keyboardist. Sounds like we have here a transitional album, but the transition seems almost complete...

Take all the worst songs from recent albums starting with Adrenalize and put them on a single record and you get this. Songs have become shorter and shorter again, with almost none passing the 4 min mark, with the rule being plain hard rock sounding most of the time very poppish and cheezy. Add this a relative similarity in all the songs and you get... nothing. Clearly an album for core Def Leppard fans only.

Some kind of "reunion" album... seems like Testament won't do commercial thrash again, as this release is still strongly rooted in the thrash/death of their last three albums, but there are hints of the sound of their debut album The Legacy here too. Two of the historic members (Skolnick, Christian) are back, and this release is much more solid than the last two. The music is quite comparable to the Low album with strong vocals by Chuck Billy (using almost exclusively his normal voice here except on one track), but as Low was more a transitional album, this is more like a "best of" album... and much less diverse than Low, with the second half of the album being quite repetitive.

Testament reached the top of their career here. Songs are catchy as hell, and as diverse as you can get for a thrash metal band: fast, mid-paced, long, short, ballads, instrumentals... James Murphy does a great job as a replacement for Alex Skolnick and Chuck Billy has improved his voice a lot to give more diverse vocal patterns. I just regret the pointless death metal track ("Dog Faced Gods") here, which would have prefectly fit on their later releases... but really not here.

Nothing much to say... I was blown away at the first listen. Songs mix orchestral power metal with symphonic prog metal, and the classical interludes really blend very well with the more aggressive songs. The vocals are amazing... sometimes really strong on the power parts, sometimes really melodic on the mellow parts. A must have in any music collection...

Not really my taste... Except the first song, "Nightfall Overture", this is more or less pretty straightforward hard rock with some keyboards, looking towards bands like Journey or Payne-era Asia. Too bad, because Nightingale recorded better songs on their first four albums...

A disappointing release...

I was expecting a heavier "Mezzo Forte" with a mix of operatic music and doom metal... but this is simply "Mezzo Forte" with growled vocals and almost no classical moments. The band takes the melodies from the previous album and revamps them in an early My Dying Bride/Paradise Lost way. The vocals are 100% harsh (at least the male vocals)... and if you don't like growling you certainly won't like this album at all, even if this type of vocals is here perfectly performed and enjoyable, due to the use of no screams at all (it's more like a low rumble). Still remains a good moment: the last three songs...

This album is available... as a free download at the band's website! So I gave it a try...

Not bad... a mix of post metal with long atmospheric instrumental parts and doom/death metal in the vein of early Katatonia (first album, or Brave Murder Day). I really enjoyed the music... but the vocals are really not my taste. The growled/screamed vocals on tracks #2 and #3 are horrible (the usual bad gurgling), and the clean vocals on track #4 lack emotion. Still a nice release...

This album is a strong follow up to The Human Equation. Very well produced with vocalists and musicians giving the best of them. It has its good moments (I could even say it has his great moments... some of the songs here are unbelievable) and also its cheezy parts like its predecessor.

I don't know what to think of this album... I tend to like the music, with nice melodies and great use of classical instruments, but at the same time almost each song contains some "cheezy" parts that I find completely uninteresting. Not to mention the pointless last track (a couple piano notes at the beginning and at the end, and in between three minutes of silence)...

This is the most mature and balanced work from this great australian band... Imagine a mix of doom metal (in the vein of Cryptal Darkness, another australian band) and classical music, with orchestral parts that would make Therion and other symphonic metal bands look like amateurs. Previous efforts were not bad, but they lacked the quality of a real orchestra, well produced vocals and music...

I don't really know what to think of this album... the band continues on the same post metal sound, this time less bleak and repetitive than on The Mantle, and the music is really good here... but unfortunately the vocals are horrible. There are less clean vocals, and when the singer uses harsh vocals (that is on every track except the three instrumentals), it's unfortunately some really ugly gurgling voice...