“The name “The Autumn Offering” evokes the mental image of a hooded cultist bent down on his knees, holding up a platter of orange, rotting leaves as a leafy sacrifice of some sort to some leaf-munchin’ goat demon. But as a band that was once signed to Jamey Jasta’s Stillborn Records, The Autumn Offering is hardly obsessed with the environment or the occult.” Happy Metal Guy goes back to 2006 to regale us with tales of quality metalcore. Fairy tales maybe? You make the call.
In 2009 Angry Metal Guy started. Since then we’ve produced hundreds of reviews, and Angry Metal Guy has cranked at the world for free. Check out what he takes away from the whole experience.
Angry Metal Guy is becoming an interwebs institution. You might not realize this, but this is my fifth Top 10(ish) Records o’ the Year since I started this as a lone Internet Metal Warrior back in 2009, reviewing for my literally dozens of readers, none of whom commented. Can’t believe it? Try these on for size. It’s impressive how far this little blog that could can come, and it’s amazing how much I used to review! Several CDs a week! Incredible. Anyway, the times they are achangin’, but the one thing that isn’t changing is that I have opinions and galldarnit, I’m going to tell you them.
“Wow, what a year! A large portion of 2013 has had me working my ass off in preparation for my stint out at sea with 70,000 Tons of Pure Fucking METAL! I’ve tried to curtail my excitement, but fuck it, this is huge – Carcass, Septicflesh, Finntroll, Overkill… what more could a girl ask for?” As Madam X shamelessly drops free plugs for a certain novelty cruise line, she also delivers her best albums of the year. That lady can multi-task!
In our first Angry Metal-Fi article, Alex pointed out exactly what’s wrong with Fleshgod Apocalypse’s Labyrinth — it’s compressed to within an inch of its life, ruining the music that the band worked so hard to create. It’s easy for us to sit and point fingers though and tell you how everyone is doing it wrong, (which they are). To really get a sense of what you’ve been missing, you need to hear some examples of bands and engineers that are doing it right. Once you’ve heard how good fully dynamic metal can sound, and how much better your favorite albums could have sounded had they been mastered with full dynamics, we hope that it will make you angry. You might even shed a tear for everything that’s been lost over the last 20 years, so many great albums ruined because of the insanity that is the Loudness War.
“When Dave and I founded Metal-Fi, we were prepared for many things, but the one thing we weren’t prepared for was that Angry Metal Guy would get well, angrier.” So begins the first in a series of cross-posting articles about production and sound dynamics in heavy metal from the boys at the excellent website Metal-Fi, called “Angry Metal-Fi.”
“Labyrinth is 2013’s incarnation of Fleshgod’s neo-classical death metal. Once again, Labyrinth is not a clone of the band’s previous work, but instead it seems to be Fleshgod’s attempt to reach a happy medium between Agony and Oracles, musically.” Angry Metal Guy weighs in to wordily explain how he feels about the latest slab of orchestral tech death from Italy’s Fleshgod Apocalypse. When we say wordily, we really mean it. Like a thousand freaking words just telling you what he thinks of this album. It’s kind of ridiculous really. No one should spend that much time writing about an album. Who the hell does he think he is?
“When you hail from Finland, a country teaming with metal giants (cast your mind along the lines of Finntroll, Amorphis and Ghost Brigade to name but a few), you have two choices: Option 1, you up your game, you mature as a band and you write epic tracks. Option 2, you keep on keeping on, you join the unknown masses and you sink into obscurity. On this their fourth release and a solid five years in the making, Shade Empire went with option 1.” Madam X is big on lists, notations and options, so find out where she ranks the new Shade Empire in her arcane filing system. She’s like Conan the Librarian.
“Yes, Atrocity have indeed lived up to their name and not in the way one hopes for in death metal, technical, melodic or otherwise. They’re the band that brought out the very un-metal Werk 80 consisting of ‘metalled up’ covers of 80’s pop songs. Oh and wait for it they didn’t stop there, 11 years down the line they doubled the atrocity with the release of Werk 80 II (a double album offering) – I have to ask why?” Steel Druhm joins Madam X in asking why a death metal band chose to make their name doing novelty covers of 80s pop hits, but hey, who are we to judge? Now they’re doing real death metal again and Madam X kinda digs it.
Madam X gets all the hot, nasty necro-metal! Here, she examines whether tales of necro-lesbianism make for a great album. The answer just might surprise you!
