Neither snow, holiday hangovers nor lackluster apocalypses can keep Steel Druhm from showcasing his picks for Top Ten(ish) of the year in metal. He did all the work, you just need to read carefully, nod approvingly and give some harrumphs to the Steel One.
Happy Metal Guy likes anime and cartoons and other weird stuff. Naturally, he was the logical choice to review a silly, make-believe album by non-existent death metallers, Dethklok. He also likes rainbows, puppies and ponies, but we won’t get into that now.
Is it that time already? Kinda! Steel Druhm gives his picks for “Best in Show” so far for 2012. Send all criticisms to [email protected].
We’re now into July! Impressive as it is, this year has been one hell of a year: like the year 2011 was supposed to have been but really, really wasn’t. On a personal note, I can say that I wasn’t expecting 2012 to be good at all. However, there haven’t even really been any major […]
Last month I debuted a new Record o’ the Month format, and I thought it was pretty good. With a bit of input from the folks here who review at Angry Metal Guy, we were able to put together a good list of shit that was competing for the top position. While June is not as strong, there were still three records that tied for score and I, Angry Metal Guy, decided that a shared throne was necessary. So here it is, your Records o’ the Month!
Be’lakor has a new record and we’re finally reviewing it. Saad, are you happy now? ARE YOU HAPPY?
There was a time when melodic death metal was every breath I took. While it’s been a long time since that was the case, I certainly can say that I spent the late 90s and early 00s listening to my fair share of melodic Swedish death metal and loving it. But since then melodic death metal has kinda fallen off a cliff. This is partially due to the dawning of metalcore and the co-opting of Swedish thrash and death metal by hardcore kids, but I think it’s mainly because just like every scene after a while you start growing tired of the sound. Every new album that gets released gets a “Yeah, well, I’ve heard this before.” While there have been some notable melodic death metal records in the last couple of years, Barren Earth and Be’lakor come to mind, only the former has really stuck out as truly remarkable. That is until I checked out New World Shadows from Omnium Gatherum.
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.
Be’lakor is an Australian melodic death metal band that has been getting some serious attention in the underground despite the fact that much melodic death metal has pretty much been declared by the scene to be dead on arrival. I’d been reading about them for some time so I just wrote them a message on MySpace and the guys were cool enough to send me a copy to review. And I can see why they’re so eager to get their music out to the masses, it’s a bit like ear heroin.
