Odious Mortem - Cryptic Implosion [2007]

The vocals are WAY more powerful than they were on the previous album. "Fragmented Oblivion" starts shit off on the right foot with catchiness, brutality, energy, and a massive amount of technicality. Shit, half-way through the album and it's still fucking brutally ripping its way through my ears. It's non-stop technicality and energy. Excellent production quality. It's clear, heavy, and punchy all at the same time and seemingly without any compromises. The album is a little shorter than most which works in its favor since the material isn't diverse or experimental.

Rating: 8

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odious_mortem

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

Odious Mortem - Devouring the Prophecy [2005]

Short as hell Technical Death Metal album. It's pretty damn heavy and it's very technical. The production is quite good as well. I'm not a fan of the vocals on this album, though. They feel weak. There's clearly an air of Cannibal Corpse on this album with the harmonized guitar trills. It's not a particularly catchy album and after listening to it, nothing sticks in my head. So, the songwriting could use some work, but if all I'm looking for is a solid Technical Death Metal album to throw on to kill some time, this will do nicely.

Rating: 6.5

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odious_mortem

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

Novembre - Wish I Could Dream it Again [1994]

The production quality is what I'd expect for a first album. It's pretty interesting stuff. Really feels like they've stumbled onto a style while it was just beginning to break out. Just when everything felt like it was getting mundane, they break out with the ending section of "Novembre/its Blood" and redeem all of the interest that was lost. The Black Metal parts are wonderful. The singers pitch control is lacking to say the least, but I've heard worse and it somehow isn't that distracting. The album is a MONSTEROUS length, making it nearly impossible to listen to the whole thing in one sitting without falling asleep. Crop the songs a bit, take some singing lessons, and the material would be top notch.

Rating: 7.5

http://www.novembre.co.uk/

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

Sarah Marie Mullen - The Wild Woods [2006]

It's shocking how, despite being predominantly harp music, this album is in a completely different style than LF. Some more instruments have been added to the mix, like flute and guitar. It feels like LF was for more of the upper classes of society while this is geared more towards the common folk during a party. I'm not really a big fan of a fair amount of the material on this album. Maybe it's the arrangements, but it really doesn't feel all that much like period music and doesn't get me in the renaissance mood. One of the standouts is "Nonesuch".

Rating: 6.25

http://sarahmariemullen.com/

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

Sarah Marie Mullen - Luna's Fancy [2004]

What can I say. It's beautiful stuff. Pretty well played with only a few significant mistakes that stand out. I can't comment on the songs themselves since I don't know if she wrote them or is just playing them. Either way, it's a wonderful album full of passion.

Rating: 8

http://sarahmariemullen.com/

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

Iced Earth - Horror Show [2001]

The first four tracks are quite good. Of them, only "Jack" seems to capture the energy that they used to have. However, the songwriting has improved and become more complex. "Im-Ho-Tep" is a bit of an oddity that really doesn't float my boat... makes me bored. "Jekyll & Hyde" is much more like it: catchy, energetic, and wonderfully written. "Dragon's Child" has a very validating feel to it. "Transylvania" has a very boring and contrived first half but then goes into a really cool second half with good solos. "Frankenstein" is a straight-forward and largely uninspired song that feels flat. "Dracula" has more energy. "The Phantom Opera Ghost" has lyrics that are cringingly cliché, but the music is quite good. Overall, it's not as strong as Something Wicked, but the good parts are very good. It's a very polarized album.

Rating: 7.5

http://www.icedearth.com/

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

Hatebreed - Satisfaction is the Death of Desire [1997]

So, yeah, it's a bit of Metalcore and a bit of Hardcore. Neither are winning genres for me, but Hatebreed is quite good at capturing the energy of those genres without being too annoying about it. That said, one recurring theme for this band will be the AWFUL vocals of Jasta. He has the vocal range of a fucking cricket. All vocals are exactly the same. All words are exactly the same. Monotone doesn't even go far enough to describe it, and it gets really fucking annoying after a couple songs. The positive message is also really fucking gay. Even though this album is short, it's still not short enough. I get really tired of the same riffs cropping up in song after song. Sure it's pretty heavy, but it's not particularly catchy and the vocals are relentlessly boring and shitty.

Rating: 5

http://www.hatebreed.com/

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

Slayer - World Painted Blood [2009]

They've obviously gone back to the "less is more" approach for guitar distortion... which is really fucking annoying since the music could be so much more with heavier guitars. "World Painted Blood" really is some of the best songwriting Slayer has done in Decades, and then "Unit" makes me want to forget entirely about the dismal guitar distortion and hail Father Satan that this record exists!! "Snuff" isn't bad, but not as strong as the first two songs. "Beauty Through Order" returns us to the days of the slow-and-fucking-evil songs that were prevalent on Seasons... "Human Strain" just emanates darkness and evil. "Americon" is possibly the only weak song on the album. "Playing With Dolls" uses some of the new-school ideas that they've had and blends them perfectly with South of Heaven-era evil and style. It's wonderful; the writing is excellent. Evil is back in the foreground. It's as if Slayer took everything that I loved about their various styles over the years and very carefully slammed them all together. That said, they also grabbed a couple things that I really don't like about the newer stuff (like the stuff that reminds me of a nu-metal riff). The only real thorn in the side of this album is the guitar production. Yeah, fine, they wanted to be old-school about it, but they went back to the Seasons distortion and that's not really "old-school". So, they ended up with a really weak distortion for an ideal that isn't even correct in the first place. It's easy to look past the production issue, though.

Rating: 8.5

http://www.slayer.net

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Nile - Amongst The Catacombs Of Nephren-Ka [1998]

No time wasted here at all. "Smashing the Antiu" jumps right into the fray with grinding. It's good stuff all the way through. Very brutal, pretty catchy, and quite focused. It is technical, but not quite to the extreme that the later albums are.

Rating: 7.75

http://www.nile-catacombs.net/

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

The Doors - The Doors [1967]

There are quite a lot of the classics that everyone knows on this album. It's quite ethereal and the music skips through varying degrees of madness, excitement, and calmness. It has that charming '60s recording feel to it, complete with the drums in the left speaker only. Nicely varied, but somehow all cut from the same cloth. There's a good amount of consistency in the songwriting. So none of the songs feel particularly weak or rushed.

Rating: 7

http://thedoors.com/

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

Cannibal Corpse - Gore Obsessed [2002]

Another push on the production quality makes this the heaviest CC album by far. There's a lot of good stuff here. There's more catchiness and blasting, too. While all of the songs have very good riffs, a worrying amount have filler riffs blended in as well. So, it's a bit uninspiring at times, but awesome at others.

Rating: 7.75

http://www.cannibalcorpse.net/

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

Cannibal Corpse - Bloodthirst [1999]

New production quality isn't as warm as Gallery, but it is a bit heavier much more clear. The overall level of excellence for this album is much higher than anything CC had done before. It's more brutal, more active, more technical, and more focused. Very good album. It has everything that I love about the new style of CC and it's all well-executed.

Rating: 8

http://www.cannibalcorpse.net/

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

Cannibal Corpse - Gallery of Suicide [1998]

After the thrashy "I Will Kill You" and the incredibly catchy and brutal "Disposal of the Body", "Sentenced to Burn" dives into the more mid-tempo and chunky side of Death Metal. "Blood Drenched Execution" has a few catchy parts, but most of it feels pretty weak compared to the previous songs. "Gallery of Suicide" drops into the slow-tempo'd style for the first bit. It's not all that catchy or gripping, but it does have an evil twinge to it. It even feels like Black Metal at a few points. "Dismembered and Molested" picks things up on all fronts. Then, there's "From Skin to Liquid", an epic and purely evil opus that can easily get every hair on my neck to stand straight up. "Unite the Dead" is a heavy romp that brings more catchiness to the CC sound. It's a tiny bit gimmicky, though. "Stabbed in the Throat" largely passes by unnoticed. "Centuries of Torment" brings that low pitch evil guitaring that I love back to the album. Overall, it's got good production quality and some good writing. There are a decent number of standouts as well and it's always heavy.

Rating: 7.5

http://www.cannibalcorpse.net/

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

Cannibal Corpse - Vile [1996]

Kick in the nuts start to the album. "Devoured by Vermin" really seems to set the stage for the newly evolved CC to push the brutality and complexity of the music to a level far beyond what they've done before. Admittedly, I don't like the flow breaking sections in songs like "Mummified in Barbed Wire" and "Perverse Suffering". All seems to be redeemed by the awesomeness of "Disfigured". "Bloodlands" initially takes the dark, doomy, and evil CC style before breaking out with an explosion of thrash and technical guitaring. There are a lot more stand-outs in this album than the previous one. "Devoured by Vermin", "Disfigured", "Puncture Wound Massacre", "Relentless Beating", "Absolute Hatred", and "Monolith" stand out in my ears.

Rating: 7.5

http://www.cannibalcorpse.net/

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

Cannibal Corpse - The Bleeding [1994]

Right from the start, it feels a bit more like the passionate brutality that CC is known for. Hopefully it will last through the whole album. I'm a bit worried that they may have front-loaded this album with good songs... I mean, shit, they just keep coming one after another: "Staring Through the Eyes of the Dead", "Fucked with a Knife", "Stripped, Raped and Strangled". It's hard to imagine that they can keep such a level of song writing throughout the rest of the album. I must say, Chris' vocals are starting to fucking annoy me, especially his high-pitched screams that sound like a five-year-old is yelling while holding his nose. For the most part, the material does actually stay pretty strong through the rest of the album. However, there aren't really any standouts like the first three songs of the album.

Rating: 7.25

http://www.cannibalcorpse.net/

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

Cannibal Corpse - Tomb of the Mutilated [1992]

Off to a catchy, heavy, and grinding start with "Hammer Smashed Face". It doesn't have the excitement of their later works overall. I'm not sure if it's the dead production quality or the filler riffs, but it just doesn't feel as exciting. There are a few tracks on here that will get my blood pumping: "Hammer Smashed Face", "Addicted to Vaginal Skin", and "The Cryptic Stench".

Rating: 6.5

http://www.cannibalcorpse.net/

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

Cannibal Corpse - Butchered At Birth [1991]

There's a lot more doom to this album. There are also places where the album drags quite a lot. It feels like the writing for this one isn't quite as strong and forceful as Eaten. There are definitely a few classics like "Meat Hook Sodomy", and "Covered With Sores".

Rating: 6.75

http://www.cannibalcorpse.net/

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

Cannibal Corpse - Eaten Back to Life [1990]

Heavy writing. It's a lot more thrash inspired than CC's later stuff, but the classic CC style is still buried in the music for those who know. It's not down-right catchy, but it's invigorating and energetic. The production quality is surprisingly clear and clean for being the first album. Pretty good distortion on the guitars as well. It's still mixed in that early Death Metal style. So, the guitars could stand to be higher in the mix and contain more punch. It's still a good album, even by today's standard.

Rating: 7.25

http://www.cannibalcorpse.net/

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

The Devin Townsend Project - Ghost [2011]

Judging by the beginning of "Fly", this will be an album more in the style of Ki. Fuck, it's so damn calm it's impossible not to feel relaxed. Good use of Native American flute... not too forward, but certainly audible. "Heart Baby" seems to reinforce what the album is leaning towards in style and mood. "Feather" is a large song that relies more on the atmospheric natural world to get by. "Kawaii" picks things up a little by switching focus to more of what the album started off as. Then, "Ghost" somehow changes style entirely to something reminiscent of southern folk, and "Blackberry" continues the direction with the addition of more traditional American folk instruments and writing. "Monsoon" and "Dark Matters" opt for a very ethereal, natural, and atmospheric feel. "Texada" brings the music more forward. This album differs from Ki in that the style feels much more like it was influenced by New Age. It's a very pleasant album that seems to sooth the soul. It's very impressive that Devin has managed to so accurately mix New Age into his own style.

Rating: 8.5

http://www.hevydevy.com/

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

The Devin Townsend Project - Deconstruction [2011]

Wahey! I was NOT expecting an electronic almost break-beat style to the beginning of the album. Damn, nice way to ease the music into epic and crushingly heavy metal. "Stand" drags a lot during the middle, but tries to make up for it with a validating end. "Juular" is quite an epic and energetic song... it is much needed after the very long and drawn-out "Stand". "Planet of the Apes" is all over the place. Thrashy, dragging, energetic, validating... it's got the lot. "Sumeria" flexes some of the catchier and more brutal muscles that Devin has. It's a strange album, this. It's so all over the place that it never really settles on anything that I prefer. So, there are times when I feel it's just boring. It's also not the catchiest or most gripping album. Even so, there is a lot to like about this album. The creativity is nearly burning the album alive. There are some really great riffs thrown in here as well as a lot of madness. Most of what I don't like about this album I can chalk up to me simply not being in the mood for a concept album. I can still see what an epic album this is despite my mood. As the album progresses, I feel myself diving deeper into it... it could be that my mood is being altered, or maybe it's that the songs have gotten better.

Rating: 8.5

http://www.hevydevy.com/

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