Ravage – The End of Tomorrow Review

Ravage – The End of Tomorrow Review

Certain styles are, and should remain, dead. There was a breed of melodic thrash metal, primarily propagated by Germans (a la Helloween) that should now be left to die. Now, I want to be fair, much of that music has transformed into Europower, which has some great bands in it. The style isn’t entire lost or dead, but one thing should be made clear: the bands that kept it alive are bands that did something new with it, that made it their own and that could be distinguished from the masses. None of these things actually describe Ravage or their new album The End of Tomorrow.

Shroud of Despondency

Shroud of Despondency

Frankly, I’m surprised that I hadn’t heard much more of this stuff earlier. Back in the day when I was in my old band, we played a show up in the UP (a link, for those who don’t know) where we came in contact with a really great band (whose name I cannot remember for the life of me) which contained a very great guitarist (whose name I can remember, Rory Heikkila). Long story short, said band doesn’t exist anymore, but that guitar player has relocated from the boonies to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where he currently is producing some pretty fucking amazing black metal. If you’re into depressive black metal, you should definitely check out the first full length from this project For Eternity Brings No Hope (be prepared for some pretty low-fi recording, but there’s some seriously good shit on this album, the album was sold out, but is now available via mp3 here).

Vader – Necropolis Review

Vader – Necropolis Review

Vader doesn’t have the star power of other Polish bands on their labels (whose CD I just reviewed here), but they definitely have the talent and the drive after all this time. To give the reader a little disclaimer: I haven’t ever been a big Vader fan, in fact, this is only the second full Vader album I’ve heard and I wasn’t terribly impressed with the earlier one–though one never knows how it would sit today. What I remember is thinking that the band lacked a few things that made me wonder why I should even be listening to them at all. Apparently I was having a bad day or something, either that or Vader has had a phoenix-like rebirth from the flames. No matter what happened, Necropolis fucking rules and I’m stoked about it.

Angry Metal Guy’s Classics: #2

Angry Metal Guy’s Classics: #2

OK, so the first album that I did in my “classic albums” section was Type O Negative, which of course, was one of my favorite bands at the time. But they also turned me onto Roadrunner Records, which for those of you too young to remember, was kind of one of the few places even putting out metal in the US during the 1990s. Sure, in retrospect, a lot of that stuff wasn’t that great. But there were a few bands on that label that put out some good records. Sepultura had Chaos AD which I loved, and one band that stands out for me to this day, and that I really loved as an angsty teenager, was Life of Agony.

Behemoth – Evangelion Review

Behemoth – Evangelion Review

Maybe I’m alone in this, but Behemoth’s tremendous success over the last few years, starting with the record Demigod has long been a great surprise to me. Not that the band isn’t good and doesn’t deserve the success. Frankly, they are great and they do deserve the success, but just the idea that a blackened death metal band from Poland would be causing such a stir wasn’t something that had crept into my mind a few years ago, before they released their first real popular “opus.” Demigod of course was followed up by a weaker The Apostasy which, while good, couldn’t possibly have lived up to the expectations of the earlier material. And, unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it, it’s probably never bad to be hotly anticipated) for the band, Evangelion is one of the most hotly anticipated records of the year. I’ve been trying to get my hands on it for a while and now that I’ve finally got a promo version of it, I’ve been playing the hell out of it.