I have accumulated many personal reviews while listening to albums. My reviewing style is non-conventional and was only intended for myself. Sometimes I will only use one sentence to describe an album if I feel that is all that's required. Other times I will review an album while I'm still listening to it, leading to a song-by-song review of the album (bringing the size of the review to nearly dissertation-level). There are times when I will even come back to a review to add information that I didn't know when originally writing the review. The point is that I won't edit my reviews to make them more readable or conventional. My reviews are always a direct result of what I was feeling when I wrote them and I want to let that feeling come through.



Showing posts with label Extreme Metal. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Extreme Metal. Show all posts

Thursday, May 26, 2011

Strapping Young Lad - Alien [2005]

Punch in the face beginning of "Imperial". There are some strange riffs that don't feel particularly catchy or brutal, but all is made well by the wonderfully-written clean vocals section. "Skeksis" flexes more of Devin's creative muscles with even Xylophone being introduced. The brutality is ramping up. And then, there's fucking "Shitstorm"... brutal isn't even the word for it; more like "brilliant". It's simplistic yet very complicated and the wall-of-sound production makes everything just insane. "Love?" brings things down to a groove level. There are a few songs that feel dragged out and fall a bit flat without much catchiness. There's a decent amount of variation in the types of metal used between tracks. However, the wall-of-sound approach makes my ears tired after a while.

Rating: 8

http://www.myspace.com/strappingyounglad

All ratings are out of 10. Rating may not be a whole number.
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Saturday, April 2, 2011

Keep of Kalessin - Reptilian [2010]

Production is way weaker than I was expecting. Ok ok ok... this is gonna be tough for me.... gotta remain objective. "Dragon Iconography" starts off on the right foot, but less than two minutes in it breaks its foot clear off. Let's get this straight right off the bat, if this music was being produced by anyone other than KoK, it would be really good... but I listen to KoK for creatively riffed and epic BLACK METAL, not complex Death Metal with bouts of melodic (puke) thrash. Fuck, this song gets worse as it goes on... more and more into the stock and well-traveled melodic area of metal. "The Awakening" has potential, but loses it all at around 1:18 when the pointless technical riff kicks in. Damn, what a shame, the chorus really has a grand Black Metal feel to it. Oh fuck me, 3 minute mark and now it feels like fucking Nightwish... ugh. "Judgment" is different in that it STARTS off awful and attempts to get better. Fuck. You know what this album is? It's a hand-full of fucking great ideas sandwiched between legendarily fucking AWFUL ideas. This album had the potential to be fucking awesome. They had a 6 ounce perfect amethyst and then they buried it under 30 pounds of fucking cowpat. I've never been so disappointed and frustrated in my life. The only song worth a damn is "The Divine Land". Extra low score for being such a let-down. Plus the production is shit.

Rating: 3.5

http://www.keepofkalessin.no/

All ratings are out of 10. Rating may not be a whole number.
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