Metal Reviews

Assassins?

Good, not great IMO.

I second that. Not that jaw-dropping masterpiece people treat it as.

Assassins and Ghosts of Grace are two of their best songs. Agreed?

Yeah, but are they really even black metal? The rest of the songs on there are solid, but not amazing.

Good point. It's got the vox and the tremolo rifffing?

Just finished listening to this ridiculously awesome album. Definitely of 2009s best.

Since when is Fox News a Metal hotbed? Interview with Phil McSorley:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jzrTKbEhDE

w need more hot headbanging newscasters

I dunno we all kinda agree that it's not a masterpiece so who is treating it that way? =x Maybe I should go to more metal forums.

I've been checking out some tracks on their myspace and I must say I'm really liking it! I've never been able to like black metal (definitely not the rawer stuff), but this completely took me by surprise. Definitely going to look for this somewhere!

On fucking FOX no less? Damn.

The first 10 seconds of it are agonising though.

I gave into the praise and listened to this thing, finally.

I do like it (77/100), but it is basically a blackened Tool. Not what I was expecting. Not sure why people have flipped out over it, but if one thing is certain, it is that USBM bands receive far more hype than black metal from other locations.

And just to make sure Trapt and I don't set a new precedent based on agreeing over Limbonic Art, from earlier:



I'd say you missed something. Or maybe my definition of black metal is old, crusty, and outdated, because Leviathan and Xasthur are the only good well-known USBM bands I consider to actually be black metal in the traditional sense.

I liked Instinct: Decay as much as the next guy, Krallice has some nice riffs, and this is a good blackened Tool album, (I promised noodles giving WIITR another shot, that is next on the list) but it seems to me that the hype for this new American scene is exaggerated compared to its actual merit.

I'll always take Negura Bunget, Darkestrah, Moonsorrow, Drudkh, Nokturnal Mortum and so forth, over this stuff.

I think I like a lot of those bands because they are not traditional in the slightest. Emperor, Limbonic Art, all those classic bands etc. really don't need to be cloned as the tendency seems to go.

I've only really given adequate listens to Drudkh out of this list and I'd probably agree with you and listen to them over some USBM but I think they're two different styles for two different moods.

Well, I am with you on that, we don't need a million more Darkthrone/Burzum clones. Clones of Emperor/Limbonic Art are much rarer it seems, but those aren't necessary either.

Yes the Eastern Europe/Folk style is very very different from the new USBM stuff. Different moods entirely, agreed. Ultimately all are good musicians, I would just argue the East European style has followed the path of the Norwegian 2nd Wave better than the US stuff.

Definitely agree with you there. However, that's exactly why I like bands like Nachtmystium, Cobalt and Twilight. They came up with a new approach to black metal. So did their European peers like Negura Bunget and Deathspell Omega, in a different way. All very unique bands, all of them are as great as the other one.

Years later, I realize that the album cover photo is actually Ernest Hemingway as a young man.