In honor of the release of Halo on the 11th of February (that’s this Friday), from Atomic Fire Records, we here at AngryMetalGuy.com are giving you a rock-solid grounding in the band this website has stolen all its logos from.
The Karelian Isthmus
Paganizer – World Lobotomy Review
“More Rogga?? With Mr. Johansson being involved in one of every three reviews I write lately, maybe we should change the website name to Rogga o Rama. I’ve recently examined his Megascavenger and Just Before Dawn projects and here he is again with his main outfit, Paganizer (he also has a collaboration with Paul Speckmann of Master coming in a few weeks). The man is an omnipresent force in the Swedish death scene (hell, he IS the Swedish death scene) and he’s been responsible for lots of rich, creamy death metal. In all honesty though, I’ve always found Paganizer to be a pretty spotty act. Some of their early output was solid and some of the more recent stuff was less so.” So does World Lobotomy cause brain damage or suffer from it? Our resident Rogga expert Steel Druhm is back from the nervous hospital to provide his diagnosis.
Nightfall – Cassiopeia Review
Greek genre benders Nighfall are back and this time, they really mean business. METAL business! Be it doom, black, death or power, they try to cram it in this here album like 60 cats in a suitcase. This is almost as fun as that suitcase too!
Hooded Menace – Effigies of Evil Review
Ah, what could be better than nasty, heavy-as-hell Finnish doom-death to ease the transition from summer to fall. In case you haven’t heard, winter is coming…
Amorphis – Magic & Mayhem Review
Legal Disclaimer: Long time readers of the mighty AMG may have noticed that Mr. AMG is a shameless Amorphis fanboy. While his epic fanboyism runs to their newer material, I myself am an unapologetic fanboy for their older material, especially their first three albums, which I hold in extremely high regard. Therefore, my review of Magic & Mayhem, an album of re-recordings from those very albums, is subject to some serious fanboy bias and perhaps AMG should have handled this himself to insure a more objective (yet still fanboyish) viewpoint. Now that I satisfied those eggheads in the AMG legal department by disclosing said bias, we can proceed with the freaking review! [Whatevs, we’re good with fanboyism so long as I agree with it. – AMG]
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.
Amorphis – Skyforger Review
Amorphis is easily one of my favorite bands producing metal in the 2000s. Over the last few years I’ve seen a lot of the bands that I really got into when I was a young, impressionable metal guy start to get more and more popular as they got picked up by bigger labels, got put out on the market, and as metal got cool again (who’da thunk it?)–bands like Opeth, Enslaved, Amon Amarth and others. Amorphis, however, had fallen off my radar, and I think a lot of people’s radars, before they got themselves a new vocalist. A man of small stature, and huge personality and voice: Tomi Joutsen. For whatever reason, this breathed life into the venerable, and quite excellent, band taking them out of their temporary lull and pushing them to the forefront with the bands putting out the best modern metal has to offer.