![The Ridiculous Year o’ Death Metal Round-up, Part 2 [Things You Might Have Missed 2018]](https://www.angrymetalguy.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/dmwm-list2-facebooksplash-768x403.png)
“2018 has been undeniably kind to death metal. So kind that it became impossible to pay the necessary attention to every release worthy of note. So, possessed of tyrannical temperament and iron resolve, Kronos and I have enlisted the help of the staff to cover those bands that went so unjustly overlooked.” – Even MORE death metal we missed!? Wow, we’re bad at this job.
“Nearly every time I prepare to go out for food and/or drink, I tell myself something along the lines of “I’m only going to have a couple” or “I’m not going to eat too much.” This inevitably leads to a moment later in the night where my wife mocks me for bemoaning the fact that I’ve tested the limits of gluttony and intemperance again. “Just accept the fact that you’re going to get hammered and eat too much and choose to enjoy it,” she says. She’s onto something here. While it’s generally best to aim for moderation in life, sometimes you just have to go into something expecting and embracing excess. This is a lesson that Spanish symphonic power metal band Eternal Dream demands that you take to heart.” Gluttony and lust!
“There are few things that break my heart quite like seeing people with passion give their all to something and fail anyway. It’s inevitable in many cases, and often funny (darkly or otherwise), but something about it tugs at the heartstrings. Apropos of nothing let’s discuss Once, a German band named, presumably, for the Nightwish album you just thought of. Having toiled in the underground for a half-decade, Once are finally here with a debut album, After Earth. How does it stack up against the glut of material in their chosen milieu of symphonic power metal?” Once is enough.
“Hope is a curious thing. It is sustenance where nourishment is absent; light where darkness broods; a rope thrown into a pit where escape is unfathomable. When I was saddled with Dark Sarah’s previous album, The Puzzle, back in 2016, I was little more than a whelp on this venerable site. I was tasked with making hay from a record hewn from gaudy symphonic metal, a genre I had little appetite for and went about my assignment with scant enthusiasm. Hope is what I clung to, the hope that The Puzzle would be the exception to the rule. The end result was an album of middling quality that held potential for much more. So here we are with Dark Sarah’s new release, The Golden Moth, and again I find myself turning to hope.” Make the climb.
“Symphonic metal wraps up the teenage rebelliousness of heavy music in the comforting folds of palatable vocals, unsubtle melodies, and often attractive front-women for fans to drool over. Is this an oversimplification? Perhaps, but I would have a hard time being persuaded that there is not some truth in this. Leah aims for greater things.” Aim big, miss bigly.
“When reviewing copious amounts of music, you may think that the process engenders a multitude of questions. Sadly, the one I am most wont to ask — and by an abyssal margin — is ‘why.’ Why did I bring this on myself? Why is this happening? Why did they think this would be okay? Clearly in some alternate universe I must have pissed in Jørn’s pocket and told him it was raining, because his wrath has extended beyond all manner of quasar, quantum and quark to facilitate my punishment with Sarajevo’s The Loudest Silence, a symphonic metal band whose name and debut album title, Aesthetic Illusion, have me buckled under the weight of such irony. ” Jørn givith, Jørn taketh away.
“Aeternitas are show people. The touch of a thespian graces every pocket of their off-off-off Broadway metal career. 2016’s House of Usher took a step back from their Rappacinis Tochter stage show, to a green-as-a-clover Dr. Wvrm‘s great relief. Even then, the Poe-inspired production struggled to balance theatrics, symphonics, and plain old musics. Now, the Germans ditch a single narrative for a collection of them in hopes that fifth entry Tales of the Grotesque can mend the gap between art and fart.” Community theater-core.
“Elvellon is a quintet that consciously or not follows closer than I previously believed possible in the shoes of Nightwish’s mid-period. Their debut album Until Dawn is a stone’s throw from both Century Child and Once, while offering a distinct character through some small changes in compositional technique. This statement alone is not an indication of quality, however, and gives rise to the most important question of all. Do Elvellon manage to fill a gap left by Nightwish?” Dawnwish!
“In the curd kingdom of Powermetapolis, in the days just before World War III, things were not well. A cruel wizard, known as Dread Lord Chëëse, had descended upon Powermetapolis with his army — the Trite Trope Troop — and engulfed the lands in flames of predictable parmesan. The echoes of endless Epica clones haunted the air with their carbon-copy cries, over-the-top orchestral orchids had all but choked the indigenous metal flora into extinction, and the kingdom found itself reduced to a laughable shell of its former potential in the wake of the invading tides. Times were trvly tough for Powermetapolis, and in 2007 a group of a peculiar species known as Frenchmen formed an alliance known as Whyzdom, a musical militia whose mission was to bring back the life, the glory, and the powah to the kingdom.” Take the powah back!
“Headed up by pianist, keyboardist, and classically-trained composer Pierre Le Pape, Melted Space represents an ambitious attempt to unify heavy metal with an opera, featuring a full orchestra and a cohort of guest vocalists and musicians which would make Arjen Lucassen (of Ayreon) and Tobias Sammet (of Avantasia) think twice.”Go big or go back to the conservatory.
