Angry Metal Guy

Fragments of Death was my first encounter with Graveworm. Even though I shouldn’t have, I was surprised before listening to the album that they were from Italy and I wasn’t really expecting an album that would impress me. Call me a metal bigot but metal isn’t really something that the Italians would proudly add to their plethora of cultural influences for the rest of the world to enjoy [Bigot! There are some great Italian death metal bands, not to mention Rhapsody! - AMG]. Having confessed my prejudice, Italy has already stunned me this year with the new Fleshgod Apocalypse album which definitely improved the scene’s name and now Graveworm release Fragments of Death to add to what their fellow countrymen did a few months earlier. Continue reading

Dragonland // Under the Grey Banner
Rating: 2.5/5.0 — This Shall Not Pass!
Label: AFM Records
Websites: thegreybanner.com | myspace.com/dragonland
Release Dates: Out now!

Talk about the right album at the right time! While I was never that big a fan of the symphonic bombast and Lord of the Rings fetishism of power metal acts like Blind Guardian and Rhapsody, I was tasked with reviewing the new Dragon- land opus over the same long weekend that  local movie channels played the LOTR trilogy nonstop in their full extended glory. Since Under the Grey Banner is yet another slobbering Tolkien love-fest, replete with elves, orcs, swords and sappiness (which completes their own trilogy started on their first two albums), it fit right in. Like their previous works, it’s a full-on symphonic cheese factory with enough grandiose pomposity to choke a Balrog. You know exactly what it will sound like and what will be included. Overblown keyboards, soaring vocals, choirs, frenetic neo-classical guitar wankery, it’s a big, overwrought symphonic mess. As such, it manages to work about as well as most albums of this ilk but at least it didn’t send me running for a shot of insulin until the midway point. While its nothing you haven’t heard before from the likes of Rhapsody or Labyrinth, its well done and quite entertaining at times in a too-close-to-Broadway-musical kind of way. However, it has it’s share of consistency issues and isn’t as strong as their 2004 Starfall release. That said, I’m sure fans of this type of Dungeons & Dragons™ music will love it like a +10 sword of sliceification. In case there was ANY doubt about the nerd-factor of this stuff, Dragonland created an interactive website with maps and narrations to help guide you on the mystic  journey they planned for you. Holy nerd bait, Batman! Continue reading

Rhapsody of Fire // The Frozen Tears of Angels
Rating: 5.0/5.0 — The Rhapsody record you’ve been waiting for…
Label: Nuclear Blast (EU | US)
Websites: rhapsodyoffire.com | myspace.com/rhapsodyoffire
Release Dates: EU: 30.04.2010 | US: 06.29.2010

It seems forever since Italian power metallers, and just generally over-the-top crafters of Symphonic Hollywood Metal (or as I called it in one of my very earliest reviews “Sword Swinging Elf Metal”) produced an album. And really, in terms of the modern music industry it has been a very long time. Rhapsody of Fire‘s last album, Triumph or Agony, was released in 2006 to almost no fanfare. I didn’t see a single advertisement for the album, I never knew that it was being released and I had no idea that they had even been working on a new album at all. One day I just walked into my local record store and saw it on the shelf there. The total lack of build-up foreshadowed how I felt about the album, and frankly the record that had gone before it: it lacked what I was looking for in a Rhapsody of Fire album. The guitar orientation was gone, the songs were not as huge, the guitar not as bombastic and the feel was generally one that I just could never really get into. Both Symphony of Enchanted Lands pt. II and Triumph or Agony, while technically filling the standards set by the band, certainly didn’t live up to what I see as the band’s crowning jewel Power of the Dragonflame.

So, that should give the reader the standard by which I judge The Frozen Tears of Angels. How does it compare to Power of the Dragonflame? Well, I can proudly say that this is the record that I expected Symphony of Enchanted Lands pt. II to be. The music is huge, fustian and exaggerated, just like you expect, but it is also the most guitar oriented record that the band has ever produced. It is this element in front of all things, that will make the average Rhapsody of Fire fan jump for joy. Gone are the slower passages, gone are the questions of where the guitar solo is because Luca Turilli, as he stated in his interview with me, “rediscovered his first love,” and this record is littered with some amazing guitar solos. My personal favorite comes from the fairly simple, but fragile and beautiful passages in “Danza Di Fuoco E Ghiaccio” a song similar to “The Village of the Dwarves”. But every song has amazing solos, the amazing harmonies and intertwining neo-baroque melodies on “Crystal Moonlight”, the great Iron Maiden double lead from “On the Way to Ainor” and so on and so forth. This record is a triumph for every neo-classical guitar loving nerd out there. Not just because of the standard solos, but because Turilli’s creativity lies in how well he blends his virtuosity in with his overall compositions.

And the overall composition of this record is also a major triumph. The use of Christopher Lee and more photorealistic artwork and so forth was all in an attempt to be taken more seriously, and while I’m not sure that this is actually happening, the band has continued to impress with their understanding of the album as a series of symphonic movements. One of the things that makes The Frozen Tears of Angels great is that while the songs stand alone, the album is not an album that you want to break out for one track. Instead, the dynamics make you want to listen to the whole album straight through and just sit in awe of the breadth and depth of the music. And while the band has often lost me in the past on their more epic tracks, even the 11 minute title track was a gripping piece. The album follows an audio story arc, just like the previous albums, but being able to combine these feelings together and turn them into both convincing neo-classical music and awesome heavy metal has never been done better by the band (or any other band, for that matter).

This is getting long, but one more final point: I have focused heavily on the guitar-oriented nature of this album, but there are a few things that stand out. The band elected (probably for  budget reasons) to not go with a full orchestra this time. While Luca Turilli denies it, part of me wonders if that didn’t actually help the sound of this record because it was something that was completely manipulatable by the musicians in the studio. I would bet that there are things that you can write for a symphony that cannot be played convincingly by a symphony and sometimes I wonder if Rhapsody of Fire‘s style doesn’t overpower the musicians they’ve hired to play it. All of the orchestrations are perfect, and the band itself is tight as hell. This is one of the tightest rhythm sections out there, not to mention the vocals of Fabio Lione are accented perfection.

The Frozen Tears of Angels is the perfect Rhapsody of Fire comeback record. After four years of chaos, and the band’s still ongoing legal fight with Joey DeMaio (who signed the band and tried to steal their sound), Rhapsody of Fire is back with a power metal vengeance. They could not have chosen a better time or written better music for this imminent return. I hope this record helps push them back into the spotlight and that the next (at least) year of touring is good for the band, for all the individuals involved and is a kick in the teeth to everyone trying to hold down the most powerful force in power metal.

So, much to my happiness, excitement and general satisfaction, Rhapsody [of Fire] has finally released more information about their new album! The record had previously been announced to be coming out on the 5th of March, but this obviously didn’t happen. Now let me say, first: the artwork is great! Sure, it’s not as colorful as the previous stuff, but I really like it. Secondly, I can’t wait to hear what these guys sound like now that they’re not shackled by the Manowar dudes. I don’t know what went down there, but I would love to get an interview about that stuff, because honestly, that shit is fascinating. They were forced to stop touring? They got like no support. Manowar basically stole their sound on the following album. That shit is crazy.

Anyway, you can now download the new song for free from their website! I’ve downloaded it and listened to it a bunch of times. It’s great. Nice to hear a good guitar solo in there, too. I cannot wait. So the new album, entitled The Frozen Tears of Angels will be released on the 30th of April in Europe! Who’s excited!? Angry Metal Guy is excited. Now if only I could actually get promo of these things….

Wow. Things have been busy around here, honestly. One of the downsides of doing this for fun is that one makes no money doing it and has to come up with other ways to pull together an income. I’ve been trying to do that, plus, other things. Anyway, this is the stuff that I’ve been up to and listening to in my freetime (of which there is actually very little). In this time, however, I have pieced together a list that I would call the “best albums of the 2000s.” I don’t know if I’d actually call them the best, so much as the ones that have really stuck with me. As a guy who thinks that it was actually the mid/late 90s that were really the defining point in heavy metal for the modern era, and that what we’re dealing with is very much the outcome of this, this list was actually very difficult for me to produce.

1. Opeth // Ghost Reveries — This is always the toughest for me. Choose which Opeth record I think most defines the modern era. I finally always decide on GR, which incidentally I hated when it came out. But it totally grew on me after that and now it’s probably my favorite.
2. Katatonia // Last Fair Deal Gone Down — Again, this is tough. I love all of their modern stuff, but I think this is probably the most consistent of all their albums. Another defining record in my life, I think, too.
3. Turisas // The Varangian Way — I consistently come back to this record over and over. It pretty much represents everything that big, awesome extreme metal should be. I also think it was very much new. It combined much of that power metal and viking metal stuff that’s been threatening to merge for years into a cohesive whole.
4. Vintersorg // Visions from the Spiral Generator — Again, how do you really choose? I chose this one because I think the whole album is fantastic. But they’re all fantastic. It’s definitely between this one and Cosmic Genesis. I chose this one ’cause I love Digorgio and Mickelson’s performances.
5. Amon Amarth // Versus the World — Again a hard one to choose. But this record has some of the best tracks these guys ever wrote and some of the best melodic death metal ever.
6. Anathema // A Fine Day to Exit — This record is fucking tremendously written and perfect from first note to last note.
7. Amorphis // Eclipse — The rebirth of Amorphis is quite possibly one of the greatest things that happened in the two-thousandsies. This album, and the two that have followed since, are some of the finest metal records produced in the modern era.
8. Rhapsody // Power of the Dragonflame — Sets the bar for orchestrated, ridiculous over-the-top metal. They’ve never produced anything like it since, nor has anyone else for that matter.
9. Ihsahn // angL — I love Ihsahn’s solo stuff. It’s a perfect blend of extreme metal and prog. His writing is massively improved since being out of Emperor, in my opinion, but I’m sure there’s a black metal guy on this board who will shriek in horror at those words.
10. Shining // V:/ Halmstad — This record hooked me immediately and hasn’t let go.

You have absolutely no idea how difficult it is to write a list like that. And I do really like writing lists, I think it’s a good time. A game for me has always been top 5s or top 10s.

Luca Turilli – The Infinite Wonders of Creation
Rating: 2.0/5.0
Band Website: http://www.lturilli.com
Label: Magic Circle

One thing I don’t think Joey Demaio was counting on when he signed Rhapsody [of Fire] to Magic Circle Records was the whole lot of them pussing out and making records about dolphins, love, and other totally un-metal things. While he got the worst record Rhapsody ever wrote, he didn’t get that. However, with Luca Turilli he got the sissiest record ever recorded—including dolphins and love, among other things (the majestic call of whales!). I, of course, was excited about the new LT because the Demonheart EP was fantastic. It basically got me my Rhapsody [of Fire] fix between Rhapsody [of Fire] records! Unfortunately, Luca has started to take himself seriously, and when this happens with power metal musicians, only bad things can come of it. That, of course, is the result of his newest release The Infinite Wonders of Creation; bad things.

See, the problem here is not that he’s stopped writing super over-the-top epic pieces of music; every single song on this record sounds like it was taken from a badly written opera (just like the fans want). But this record has no testicles. It lacks those critical elements that actually make Luca a respectable… OK, amusing and/or interesting writer that the power metal niche fan-base has heretofore worshipped. Some examples that will make a grown metal-guy weep: there are only 2 or 3 guitar solos on the whole record; he uses female vocals more than male vocals (don’t think Lacuna Coil or The Ottoman Empire  [Luna Mortis now] where the vocals are good heavy metal vocals); and I don’t recall having heard a single double-kick drum on this entirely too-long and self-gratifying record. The The Infinite Wonders of Creation is far too slow and serious, but on top of it he wrote some of his worst lyrics ever about the “beloved majestic dolphins,” and even extends the torture to the absolutely fantastic movie Stargate. It’s lyrically ridiculous—but not in a good “dark Lord Akron” kind of way. That, compounded with it being slow and plodding makes it seriously boring—bordering on torturous—at times.

The band is actually very good. Sascha Paeth (who produced all of the old Rhapsody [of Fire] stuff) appears on this again playing bass. However, since the infamous situation with an un-named South American power metal band who claimed that Mr. Paeth wrote the majority of Rhapsody’s music, Mr. Paeth seems to have been relegated a much smaller role in production and arrangement. LT utilizes 2 vocalists on this album to good use. Both of them are fairly talented, although some of the woman’s high stuff would make any vocally-trained person cringe when she swoops into notes and sings straight from her nose. However, the two vocalists have a very good blend and when they’re singing together they do a very good job of creating the sound that LT was probably going for. The harmonies are great, and they both (for the most part) have good, solid tone. To fit in with my complaints that the record lacks any real metal “spice,” the drums are slow rock-beat kind of stuff and don’t really exude the kind of energy one has come to expect from LT’s stuff.

In his defense, Luca has backed off of the guitar god thing a bit, which I think has helped him move away from overly-long self-gratifying guitar solos that plagued some of his earlier stuff and has contributed to the writing style on both the last Rhapsody [of Fire] record and on The Infinite Wonders of Creation. The melodies are good and the composition is passable (and excellent for a metal band, really), but it doesn’t pass my attention-span test; I find it terribly boring. All-in-all, if you’re a die-hard Rhapsody [of Fire]/Luca Turilli fan, you’ll probably dig this record (you’ll also probably call me names for panning your favorite group for changing their sound). The song-writing is very much LT, but it’s just not energetic or silly enough for me to really enjoy it. Without the cheesy voice-overs, the Dungeons & Dragons™ lyrics, the neo-baroque guitar solos and the never-ceasing power metal beat… what’s the point?