“Pastoral pleasures include quaint life activities like chewing on wheat straw, planning the tractor route, taking count of your animal inhabitants, and… well, shoot I don’t know, ask Cherd. Or ask Milking the Goatmachine, whose agrarian ideals include fat riffs, skanky drum beats, and squealing breakdowns.” Vote Goat 2023.
“Finland—is there something in the water? Is the air cleaner, the skies bluer, the nighttime cooler? Really, I don’t know what it is, but when you put the words “Finnish” and “black metal” together, the result is, on average, just better. And no, I don’t have stats to back this up, and I don’t plan on finding any either. All I’m going to do here is explain that between that cover over there and that country over there, I have unreasonable expectations for Ounas I, the fourth full-length release from Finnish melodic black metal act Suotana.” Fin living.
“U.K. death metal “supergroup” Memoriam are considered by some to be the spiritual successor to the legendary Bolt Thrower. With Thrower’s former vocalist Karl Willetts at the helm and backed by Frank Healy of death luminaries Benediction, the pedigree is notable and the style they traffic in has clear similarities to Willett’s renowned former outfit. Despite the talent involved, I’ve never been awed by Memoriam’s output.” Battle fatigue.
“I am generally a defender of themed metal. If Viking metal is considered a valid genre, then so should pirate metal. It’s just a shame that the latter is spearheaded by a band (which shall remain unnamed) that has gone from a mixture of comedy and epic to full meme-lord. It has cost the entire genre in legitimacy, and it now seems as if pirates can be nothing but silly cartoons. The Privateer stages a mutiny on that school of thought, however, aiming for a return to the adventurous and dramatic seafaring tales of yore.” Booty raiding.
“I was overjoyed when Tankard asked me to pose for this lovely album art. Metal fuels my mind, and beer fuels my body; it’s a match made in heaven. Tankard realized this before I was born. These inebriated Germans have been around since the early days of German thrash, and their 1986 debut was released within months of Sodom’s Obsessed by Cruelty, Kreator’s Pleasure to Kill, and Destruction’s Eternal Devastation.” Beer drool.
“Finland’s Altaria are one of those fourth-tier melodic metal acts I stumbled upon back in the early aughts and took a flyer on. 2004s Divinity had a few worthwhile cuts but was largely forgettable faux-power/hard rock in the vein of Allen/Lande or Eden’s Curse. By the time 2006s The Fallen Empire hit I was less interested in what they were doing and essentially consigned them to the darkest corners of my music collection. I slept on 2009s Unholy and was mildly surprised to see their name emerge from the skunk weeds of the promo sump some 12 years after they last sallied forth. So what does fifth album Wisdom offer the curious listener?” Unsolicited wisdom.
“I feel like it’s been a while since I’ve enjoyed some solid Finnish metal. You know what I mean—the kind of metal that’s aggressive, adventurous, inspired by nature or history or something along those lines, with that je ne sais quoi that is the Finnish charm. I didn’t realize at the time that Gladenfold is a Finnish band though—mostly I just liked the album cover on Nemesis, and the promise of some solid melodeath helped too.” Race to the Finnish.
“Few discussions in metal are as pointless as genre disagreements, and when such bouts of useless verbal sparring occur between enthusiastic Dunning-Kruger subscribers, you can expect some real dumb shit. As it did when I got in a disagreement with some friends, back when I knew a whole 3 metal bands and had barely bought my first fake leather spiked wristband. You see, I had just learned the term ‘melodic death metal’ and was vaguely aware of what power metal was, and as such, I laughed at friends telling me Children of Bodom were ‘power metal with harsh vocals,’ as the eternally-wise Encyclopedia Metallum claimed at the time. I wonder what any of us would have made of Kambrium, a band that treads the line between melodeath and power metal with meticulous precision.” Futurunreal.
“It’s been a while since I’ve reviewed female fronted symphonic metal, or to use a common colloquialism, Nightwishcore. This has not been entirely happenstance; though I do blindly grab an album from the bin on occasion, I’ve otherwise avoided all the usual markers wherever possible. But I’ll make an exception for Lost in Grey, the only Nightwishcore I’ve ever granted my wholehearted recommendation for attempting to escape the tightly cinched corset of the genre’s many clichés.” Own the night(wish).
“I love when the genre is accidentally and maliciously mislabeled by an album’s promo package. It always leads to delightfully gruesome surprises and oh so satisfying pleas and groveling by shocked and dismayed reviewers once the true nature of the promo revels itself. It’s especially amusing since the sadistic AMG management rarely lets reviewers back out once a promo is drawn from the murk and claimed. Karma is a bitch though, and what goes around comes around, and this time it was your friendly neighborhood Steel who got hoisted by his own petard ov judgment when selecting Wolfchant.” Beastly besties.
