“Dan Swanö. The name won’t mean much to the public at large. “Sounds Swedish,” some might say. “Is he an IKEA designer?” You facepalm, shake your head and move on. But sometimes, every now and then, you find yourself opposite another discerning metal listener. You drop the name, and a knowing smile spreads on their face. Because they know. They know that Dan is The Man.” When The Man comes around.
“Expectations can be an odd thing when dealing with hybrid genres. The more genres descriptors added to the band’s tag, the harder it gets to form a view of what you’re going to listen to, and it doesn’t just apply to blackened melodic industrigothic deathfolk. Take Infernal Angels, now releasing their 4th album in 15 years. Various sources I checked listed the band as melodic black metal, melodic black/death metal, or plain black/death metal.” Get in your pigeonhole!
“Collaborations between metal artists are quite common. The amount of “supergroups,” like Phil Anselmo’s own Down, can attest to that. Less common are collaborations between metal artists and people outside of metal. Sometimes these are successful, like when Anthrax teamed up with Public Enemy for “Bring the Noise.” Other times you get Lulu.” The South will writhe again.
“I’m not an expert on black metal; in fact, I’m somewhat at an initiate level. While I have dug the occasional blackened affair like Axamenta, I’ve never had quite as much love for the kind of gritty, treble-laden, snare-abusing, hysterically-snarled theater that has been hated by parents, loved by anti-establishment youths and mocked to varying degrees by just about everyone else. This makes for a difficult situation when the dumping grounds of December leave naught but black metal promos.” Black is the season.
“Let’s play a game of ‘guess the genre!’ We have a band with a nondescript, vaguely fantasy-sounding name. Google betrays it to be the Ghanese word for ‘heart.’ The album name is Revangels, which I’m guessing is a contraction of revenge and angels? That seems likely, but I choose to believe it’s about angels that have become groupies for deceased drummer The Rev, instead because that’s more clever than the alternative.” Show no symphony.
“Metalheads know very well their favored genre is among the most complex and the deepest music composed today. Getting lost among intricate compositions and soundscapes both atmospheric and complex is all in a day’s listening for us. Maligner doesn’t concern themselves so much with intricate soundscapes, though. No, this Swedish trio is more concerned with fucking shit up as hard and fast as they can, and Demon is their declaration of war.” War is swell.
![Avenged Sevenfold – The Stage [Things You Might Have Missed 2016]](https://www.angrymetalguy.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/A7X-Stage.jpg)
“If you’re anything like me, you have probably avoided Avenged Sevenfold for a long time after hearing their older work, which was so firmly planted in the land of metalcore it didn’t seem like they would climb out of it at any point. Though they did display some growth on their work past City of Evil, they continued to be a turn-off with juvenile lyrics that tried far too hard to be edgy. So if you’re anything like me, you might be skeptical when I say The Stage is a great progressive metal album. Yet here we are.” Yep, here we are all right.
![Kroh – Altars [Things You Might Have Missed 2016]](https://www.angrymetalguy.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Kroh-Altars-album-cover-ghostcultmag-800x800-768x768.jpg)
“With acts like King Goat, Darkher and Khemmis snatching Album of the Month, I’d say this has been a good year for doom metal. Good thing, then, that this is also the year I found out how great this genre is, having mostly ignored it under the false assumption that all of it was paced like a 9-hour funeral.” Newbie re-education is an everyday struggle at AMG.
“Judging a book by its cover is an age-old tradition, despite the advice of moms everywhere. Albums are much the same. For instance, if the cover is a black passe-partout around a black and white figure, with a logo I can’t read, it’s usually a one-man black metal band. With the name of an ancient Celtic goddess and an album cover more lilac than the air freshener aisle in the local Wal-Mart, Flidais seem intent to have you believe they play some sort of flowery hippie folk metal, like the Grateful Dead with more distortion.” Lilac is the new black.
“You know, you can say what you want about female fronted symphonic metal like Nightwish, Within Temptation and Leaves’ Eyes, but they have (or had) some terrific vocalists. Tarja, Sharon van Adel, Simone Simons of Epica, the list goes on. In plenty of cases the music may be tepid and derivative, but at least those golden throats are there to put salve on the wounds and distract from the musical mediocrity.” Throwing shade.
