With the end of the year nearing herewith some more CD's I believe you might like to hear. As I will soon have to start the impossible task of ranking my favorite albums of 2020 I now kept it simple and let mr alphabet guide us.
Armored Saint - Punching the Sky
It is the year 2020 and can Armored Saint still surprise me? The answer is a firm No and Yes. No they shall not change their style suddenly from the traditional heavy metal that made them big. So be ready for the voice of John Bush, a heavy drum and bass basis and the guitar solos flying all over the place. Yes they can surprise me by the simple fact that they did it again. Not many bands can state that their last albums are as strong as their early work from the eighties. Armored Saint can and only nostalgia might make the oldies favorites to some. So the outcome is simple one of the best albums of the year which is an obligatory purchase for anyone into Heavy Metal.
Compass - Our Time on Earth
Compass showed that it pays of to keep next to Aardschok also a subscription to iO Pages. It is all about discovering bands and latter magazine had a raving review first and an issue later an interview with Compass. Both made me check out the album on internet (and buy it straight after doing so) This band has Steve Newman from the band Newman writing the music. This results in a wonderful mix of melodic hard rock and progmetal light. At times I remembered the band Stride when listening to Our Time on Earth. Then I checked if Aardschok ever reviewed the album and saw they gave it a 50/100 score with lines like not one original note etc. Well for me those unoriginal notes did wonders
Fates Warning - Long Day Good Night
When I recently ranked all Fates Warning albums I stated I can not compare this album yet with the rest of their discography. Not much changed since then. It is Fates Warning, so obviously I love the album. Further it is much longer than any other release, which gives them the time to explore some different routes along the way. This variation definitely works fine. What stands out with such variety is that Ray Alder just gave us one of his best performances ever. Favorite track probably the epic, as The Longest Shadow of the Day starts simply amazing building to an instrumental outburst halfway before lyrics kick in. Not sure how it compares to other FW albums, pretty sure how it does compare with other bands of mere musicians.Geniusses.
Gargoyl - Gargoyl
The reason I checked out this band is that it holds David Davidson on guitars. He is better known from his work with Revocation and now would release an album wit Gargoyl, where no grunts appear. When I saw the clip of Plastic Nothing I ordered the album. Later while reading reviews I often saw comparisons with Alice In Chains. Not a grunge man myself I believe the voice and darkness do have some similarities. After playing the album several times I still can not fully describe what I think of it. Definitely different I might give it another ten attempts
Prehistoric Animals - The Magical Mystery Machine
Prehistoric Animlas were last year to many including me, one of the best surprises of PPE. A very nice performance and good songs. One year later they give us a follow up album and show they got even slightly better. What I like about them is that while I prefer in general my music dark and moody, they play optimistic music. With an album title that reminds us of the Beatles, no surprise maybe. Again we get seven very pleasant earwurms and I would love to see an uplifting show again by them one day.
The Reticent - The Oubliette
The Reticent is an almost one man band project by Chris Hatcock. Since 2008 he releases every four years an album. I got into this band after 2016's beautiful sad concept album On the Eve of a Goodbye. Four years later he does it again. Releasing a sad concept album that goes musically all over the place and is filled with emotions. This time Alzheimer is the subject and you can feel he has been through this process from nearby to come up with such intense songs. Overall I would call it a progmetal concept album, but be open minded towards grunts, blasts, spoken word and very calm passages. Another masterpiece makes you happy that he does have a touring band around him so who knows one day.
Solitary - The Truth Behind the Lies
I said it before and say it again the big four in thrash is only history based. If you look at the current century there are so many thrash metal bands that release albums the big four can only dream of nowadays. Further unlike Aardschok tries to tell us often good thrash metal does not have to come out of the USA or Germany only, it is a global movement. UK band Solitary herewith release their fourth album and first thing standing out is the sound blasting out of your speakers. Solitary promised us before to thrash forever, but rarely did they do so ferociously. Opener I Will Not Tolerate sets the pace and basically we get eight highlights in a row. My personal favorite so far Homage to the Broken, where we do get half a second relief before When We're Broken is spit at us in full force again. A great album on a new lable, which should bring them back to Hertog Jan country again in years to come.
No comments:
Post a Comment