Amorphis

Amorphis – Forging the Land of Thousand Lakes Review

Amorphis – Forging the Land of Thousand Lakes Review

Amorphis is a band that needs no introduction, particularly if you’ve been reading this zine for more than a few weeks. When Skyforger came out in 2009, I was fortunate enough to be able to catch it on MySpace at the time and put up a review of it on this site: it was actually one of the first things that started increasing traffic to this site. At the time that I wrote the review I was particularly laudatory of the band’s new material. Despite the wave against them because they never re-wrote The Karelian Isthmus or Tales from the Thousand Lakes again, I have been nothing but enchanted by the last three albums. They are, for lack of a better word, genius. Modern, melodic metal done with class and style, Eclipse, Silent Waters and Skyforger are three of the best album from the 2000s and have re-established the legacy of a band that has seemed to have lost its way at times.

Empuse – The Beginning of the End (1995)

Empuse – The Beginning of the End (1995)

What was happening in your life in 1995? Maybe you weren’t into metal yet, or maybe you weren’t aware that there was something growing in the heart of Sweden that would soon be one of the most successful and influential scenes in the history of heavy metal. Between 1994 and 1996 a myriad of amazing records were released from Scandinavia, Sweden in particular, but also the budding black metal scene in Norway was going on and even Finland was producing Amorphis records. Katatonia released For Funerals to Come that year, as well as it being the year of the mighty Slaughter of the Soul in 1995 as well. Go through your iTunes or on RYM or wherever and check out what was going on.

New Amorphis DVD Cover and Tracklisting Revealed

New Amorphis DVD Cover and Tracklisting Revealed

Forging the Land of Thousand Lakes will be the title of the new Amorphis DVD which is set for release on the 25th of June via Nuclear Blast. The band revealed this today through a posting to their facebook page and a quick update on their website. Like most DVDs, this is also getting the double live album treatment. The track listing appears to be pretty heavy on the later material, but I don’t think that’s anything to complain about as the last three albums have been spectacular. It’s no secret that this Angry Metal Guy has been a really big fan of the later Amorphis stuff, so you can imagine that this is pretty exciting for me.

Barren Earth – Curse of the Red River Review

Barren Earth – Curse of the Red River Review

Barren Earth took me completely by surprise. As a rule I do not post reviews of records from labels that do not send me promos of them. I think it’s a disincentive for them to do so and generally bands don’t deserve the promotion. However, sometimes bands come onto the radar that I can’t ignore, as is what happened when I picked up this new Barren Earth record on a total whim. In fact, I didn’t even know that this band had ex-members from Amorphis, the drummer from Moonsorrow, the guitarist from Kreator or the vocalist from Swallow the Sun involved, or that it was mixed by Dan Swano. I guess I should have expected that this would be a great record…

Top 10(ish) of 2009

Top 10(ish) of 2009

Well, everyone else under the sun has been releasing their Top 10 lists, and for those of you faithful readers out there I’m sure you’re also interested in what I’m going to say about the best records of 2009. First, let me say that for the first half of this year I was not indeed Angry Metal Guy, but instead, I was just a normal guy buying my metal and hoping that it was going to be fucking awesome. Now, I’m a bitter critic. As a bitter critic I hear a lot more, but this year has still been characterized by some of the biggest bands on the scene for me. Mainly, Amorphis, who in my opinion have released the finest album of the year, if not the finest album of their very distinguished career. But, let me get to that later. There have been some great records this year, but there has been a lot of mediocre shit. Think of this list as being two-tiered, top 10 and then top 20. The top 10 are the records that I think were really awesome, elite albums, the second 10 are records that I think are great and worth your time and effort. Note that I haven’t heard certain albums that I’d like to hear due to that whole poverty not being offset by stealing music thing. With this, I hope to launch AngryMetalGuy.com into the new year on a new note: one where bands suck less.

Angry Metal Guy Lives!

Angry Metal Guy Lives!

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.

Insomnium – Across the Dark

Insomnium – Across the Dark

Insomnium is one of those bands that rides on the border of melodic death metal and progressive rock, straddling the fence between good, solid heavy music and the proggy stuff that all the sadboy metal guys listen to. Those guys who secretly love The Cure and Depeche Mode and end up making stuff that sounds like newer Katatonia, Anathema or Amorphis. This isn’t really a critique, but it lets you know right off the bat where these Finnish melodic metallers are standing in reference to the never ending “is melody metal” war that seems to be going on these days.

Angry Metal Guy’s Playlist August 22nd – August 29th

These last couple weeks have been pretty crazy for this Angry Metal Guy. I’ve moved south from the fair city of UmeÃ¥, to the much bigger (and arguably fairer) city of Uppsala. While I miss Norrland, I do have to say that I’m quite enjoying certain aspects of the student culture in the city of […]

Angry Metal Guy’s First Breakthrough

Angry Metal Guy’s First Breakthrough

I was looking at my stats today and was surprised to see a site that I hadn’t been anticipating: an incoming link from Wikipedia. I was pretty stoked to see this, apparently I’ve been referenced on Wikipedia in reference to my Amorphis review! I had been in contact with their webmaster, and I’ve had tremendous success with that review (as in, people find it randomly on search engines more than any other post I’ve produced thus far). I actually revealed on this website, before any other site, that they had problems with the digi-pack CDs, but not only that they referenced the citations about the theme of the album.