Who is this Elnaz that writes the posts you might wonder, Elnaz to me is a vision, the dream of an ideal me. We all wish to be someone else, someone who is so much better than us in every way, Elnaz is that for me, the one who set the standards, the one who set the bar so high that I will forever try in vain to be that, but I will try nonetheless.
I am more approximated by the words "The Pretentious Nobody" those words describe me perfectly, It would be paradoxical in the sense that the posts are written by Elnaz under the title The Pretentious Nobody. Unfortunately I had to change it as I found another blog with the same name. It hurts because I thought I had nailed the perfect name, a name with a beautiful balance between contrast and irony with the right amount of mystery to provoke interest, but as the saying goes.
"That which does not kill us, makes us stronger"
So here I am back with another name, probably the most 'metal' name out there "Maiden Priest", if you haven't already guessed it, the name is after the legendary British metal bands Iron Maiden and Judas Priest.
A venture like this lets you know how much people actually care about you and that leads me to the next title
The Insignificance
Every time I write, I am fully aware that I am the only one that is going to read this. What I write is a shout on a mountain top or a whisper in the noise.
So what drives me ?
A work of art is most potent and honest when it does not cater to an audience, this blog may go down to the depths of obscurity but this will continue to remain the one that brings out the soul in the music we hear. Every album that is reviewed and will be reviewed are the ones that struck me on an emotional level and all I try is to explain you why.
I am serious with this as I am serious with everything that I do under the pseudonym Elnaz.
One day when the blog has around fifty posts I may write a part 2 of this or one day when I am old I may read this and smile.
Not everything is done with a reward in mind. Somethings are done just for the love of it.
Anaal Nathrakh will have the honor of being the heaviest and most brutal band that got an article written on this site, it's not because there aren't any thing heavier out there, there are bands like Portal, Dodecahedron and Imperial Triumphant that keeps on questioning our notions of what is considered as heavy. What separates Anaal Nathrakh from the countless others is that they have hooks, they have the minimum amount melody in their songs that makes even the most jaded of extreme metal skeptics coming back for more. I was one of them, a skeptic who considered their music to be just white noise recorded as loud as possible, I was wrong, making mistakes and having a prejudice is one of the banes of being a mortal. Here I am making amends, allow me to wax lyrical about one of my favorite bands of all time.
Back in 1998 two Englishmen had an idea of forming a black metal band, a band named after some chant from the film called "Excalibur", there is nothing novel about being just a black metal band in the late 1990s so they fused everything from grindcore to death metal to industrial music to add to their black metal core. The two men called themselves V.I.T.R.I.O.L (Dave Hunt) and Irrumator (Mike Kenney), the former handling vocals and lyrics and the later handling all instruments including drum programming. In the context of their music "vocals" is a loose term, Dave does every thing that is humanly possible with vocal chords and his vox stood the test of time over twenty years is itself an achievement. They are also notorious for not publishing their lyrics, which adds both to their mystery and the misery of fans trying to figure out what they are trying to say.
Why do we listen to heavy metal ? one answer it's for the guitar riffs, the almighty riff that bestows a song to become a classic, everything else that adds to the platter are just secondary, from the opening doom dirge of the title track to the abrupt stop of Blood Eagles Carved on the Backs of Innocents this album has chock-full of them. There is no such thing as 'the quintessential Anaal Nathrakh riff' their riffs are inspired from black metal, melodic death metal and metalcore but the sheer quality of the riffs makes up for their lack of originality in riff ideas.
The song So Be It has the best melodic death metal riff ever written, at around one minute thirty second into the song and that riff comes after an equally good black metal tremolo riff over blast beats. None of these riffs lasts more than twenty seconds at a time, giving it just enough time to settle into you and just when you get used to it another takes over and the best example of this is the album highlight More of Fire Than Blood. The song is probably the best they have ever recorded, it opens with a catchy and infectious riff, almost triumphant in feel but this is Anaal Nathrakh and Dave lets you know it's them, after Mike's short Slayerish solo he comes all over you with hellish screams followed by low vocal gurgle. On the pre-chorus you will hear the first describable vocals of the song and when you think things can't go anymore insane he sings the same lines in the chorus, his clean vocals sound a lot like Ihsahn on his Emperor albums but with much more refinement and menace. It takes 65 seconds to reach till the end of the first chorus and during that time Mike lays down four legitimately sick riff.
The superbly titled The Unbearable Filth of the Soul features core riffs and just before anyone think about labeling the song metalcore the song breaks down in the middle to a black metal assault and it even features pig sequels. Keeping up with the time this album was released the band teach kids how to do a breakdown properly in the song The Lucifer Effect, they also have an ear for epic melodies as heard towards the end of the song Satanarchrist. Oil Upon the Sores of Lepers is made for the mosh pits featuring an anthemic screamed chorus with an equally uplifting rifs underneath.
The lyrics from what that can be understood seems to be well researched, it is not the run of the mill anti-religious blasphemy associated with the genre. The song The Lucifer Effect is about the work of Philip Zimbardo an American psychologist who led the Stanford prison experiment in the year 1971 and wrote the book "The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil", documenting the events surrounding the study. Blood Eagles Carved on the Backs of Innocents is about the "Blood Eagle", a ritualized execution method found in Norse litrature. They even go Latin for the song So Be It, the Latin verses draws some parts of Isaiah 24 from the Bible wherein the Lord considers destroying the earth and all of its inhabitants as they have become sinful. Even the album's title is taken from the work "Moment of Freedom" by Norwegian writer Jens Bjørneboe.
Mick Kenney aka Irrumator
Dave Hunt is a strong contender for the 'best extreme metal vocalist' title but for all his vocal acrobatics this album is Mike Kenney's child, there is not a second here that doesn't feel inspired every riff, every lick and every drum fill feels right at home. If I had to pick one flaw that would be the production, the album is loud and brickwalled to the teeth, every ounce of dynamics gets sucked up buy the master. This is one of those rare cases where my love of the album's contents overrules my hate towards the questionable production choices, but having said (written) that I cannot imagine the album sounding any other way.
Anaal Nathrakh is prolific in their musical output, they went on to make four more albums after this 2009 opus and they have a discography to be proud of, none of their albums are bad. Their latest in 2016, The Whole of the Law even came dangerously close to top this one, that was the album where Dave Hunt amped up his insanity to a whole new level and Mike experimented with symphonic arrangements. They have a new album coming up on September 28th titled A New Kind of Horror and considering the quality of their recent output the album is going to be a killer, the grenade that is going to topple everyones year end 'best of 2018' lists.
"I felt physically, mentally exhausted. At the same time, though, the way it happened was beautiful. We were all around her. We had to cancel few shows when she died, but it was very enriching at the same time. We learned a lot about death"
- Joe Duplantier, Vocals, Guitars
Of all the great Gojira records, why Magma ?. This was the question that I asked myself when I thought about writing about this album and the same question might crop up for someone who is familiar with the band's sound. For those of you who aren't familiar with Gojira, here is your prologue.
Gojira is a French progressive death metal band consisting of brothers Joe and Mario Duplantier, Christian Andreu and Jean-Michel Labadie. It's hard to explain how Gojira sounds but still I am giving it a try. Mix 3 pars of Morbid Angel riffs, 1 part of Death's vocal phrasings, 1 part of Neurosis's post metal atmosphere, 3 parts of environmental and nature themed lyrics and 5 parts of raw, unhinged passion, what you get is Gojira but still, listen to From Mars to Sirus to be clear. They always had an ear for epic song structures and a concern for the world around them, eschewing the nihilism, misanthropy and masculinity associated with most heavy metal bands they crafted a unique sound for themselves. It is no surprise that Gojira is liked and respected world wide, what struck me however is their zeal for the matters they believe in and the way it is presented, with vigour, aggression and pure emotion.
Magma is different from their previous records, for many the album was a disappointment and a surprise, for me it was just a logical conclusion to where Gojira was heading. The quote at the start was taken from their interview by Rolling Stone, during the recording for Magma the Duplantier brothers lost their mother through her death and the music and the lyrics reflects this heartfelt loss. The album is filled with emotions to the brim, the epic long songs gets replaced with the ones that are short and direct. This time their lyrics are personal rather than a testament of the world around and everything here sounds inspired and fresh. I'd rather hear an album that takes risks fully aware that it could be a misstep rather than some calculated recycled ideas made from a successful template.
Right from the start they let you know that this is a different beast, The Shooting Star features a cleanly sung star-stop almost staccato verse and a dreamy reverb laden chorus. It is not the first time the band used clean vocals, they have used it before but occasionally, but here the vocals carry the song and I applaud their guts to place this song first in this ten song album. Silvera is the closest they get to their sound, the fastest song on the album, featuring their famous 'pick scrap' riffs and when Joe screams "When you change yourself, you change the world" you know that this is Gojira. The personal and direct nature of the album is written all over the next song "The Cell" featuring a simple but heavy verse riff and an anthemic chorus. The album grows in intensity as it progresses with the song Stranded, which starts off with the lyric.
"A growing sickness in the dark
distinctive lack of control
The cure is somewhere in the silence
but I am crushed by the noise inside"
The song is about one's personal struggles like the one they had and Joe tries to redeem himself towards the end as the words "Leave the moment alone" are sung again and again creating a serene atmosphere, almost trance inducing. After a brief instrumental interlude comes the title track, the song aurally and lyrically paints the picture of the album artwork and considering the album's sorrowful background you can probably guess what they mean when they sing "Embrace the light on the otherside" towards the end.
Mario Duplantier and Joe Duplantier
Let me skip two songs to write about my favorite song of the album Low Lands, the song is probably the biggest stylistic departure they have done on this album, it has a slow build up leading to a crescendo towards the end wherein it reaches the album's emotional zenith. I am not a big fan of music videos, usually an accompanying video ruins my vision of the song and in heavy metal the video it's almost always the band playing in a basement or a garage. The video of Low Lands is different, it is directed by French cinematographer Alain Duplantier, the cousin of the Duplantier brothers. It is a tribute to their homeland showing the places the brothers grew up and it is as gorgeous as the song, like the song the visuals gets more intense as the song progresses. If this post made you check out anything, I hope that it is the video of Low Lands, it is a work of art and one of the best music videos I've seen.
Magma, is definitely not their best work and it's far from perfect but it is the Gojira album that resonates with me the most on an emotional level. The album to their discography is quite like Metallica's self tittled release in 1991, both albums are direct and accessible when compared to their previous works, one changed their approach to be more mainstream another 25 later, changed their sound to carry two brother's emotions in loosing their mother. There are great albums that makes the artists invincible in what they do and then there are albums like Magma reminding us that they are indeed human.
Winds of Creation by Decapitated and Incruso by Spawn of Possession takes the cake of being my all time favorites in the whole technical death metal sub-genre, the former for its brutality and its primitive yet complex charm, the later for its in your face technicality, with more riffs per minute than the entire AC/DC discography. However of late it has become a sub-genre of paradoxes and image conflicts, take any modern technical death metal band, you will find couple of good looking young men, virtuosos in their respective instruments who look as if they belong in a jazz band. There is a constant conflict between the need to remain technical and the need to sound like a death metal band, it seems the musicians are limited by the death metal tag which they are afraid to shed off. This leads to albums and songs that are mostly "feats of technical excellence", the novelty of playing fast wears off pretty quick (Relentless Mutation by Archspire for example) and in this age of studio wizardry and pro-tools, precision and perfection has lost its sheen. So what is next for a technical death metal band? go progressive and make the technicality subtle and that is just what Obscura has done.
Progressive death metal is a sub-genre wherein some of my all time favorite bands like Opeth, Death and Gojira comes under and Obscura has slowly crept under that blanket. Diluvium is the last album of the four part concept series starting with Cosmogensis (2009), Omnivum (2011) and Akróasis (2016) based on the themes origin, evolution and consciousness respectively, Diluvium casts of the series with the theme of death. Things start off with a short drum and an "ugh" (think Celtic Frost, Thomas Gabriel Fischer etc) followed by a Mors Principium Est riff and the necessary intro scream on Clandestine Stars, but this is Obscura and the very same riffs will get intricate layers and gets complex as it progresses. Around a minute mark comes what that separates them from other death metal bands, the vocoder vocals which to me sounds like the pseudo clean vocals of Travis Ryan on the recent two Cattle Decapitation albums, it's not a bad thing however, if you have developed a taste for it, I have gone on to enjoy them with subsequent listens. The album however kicks starts in the second song Emergent Evolution, the time and space theme continues and song features a harmonized screamed and vocoder vocals as a chorus, however what struck me the most is the soulful guitar solo around the middle, 'soul' is the word that I don't usually associate with music that is labelled as technical death metal, this album features tons of those moments.
Mortification of the Vulgar Sun is my favorite of the album, it features a groovy main riff that feels off time, something that would be right at home on a Meshuggah record, the band adds more flavors to it by incorporating dreamy acoustic parts and a short bass solo. The song that follows is the catchiest on the record Ethereal Skies featuring alternate cleanly sung and growled verses, it also houses the best piece of lyric of the album.
"In ethereal skies, we transcend in eclectic divine
as a glimpse of light, forevermore.
In wandering stars, we emerge from light to abyss
as abandoned gods, we redeem in purgatory"
Ethereal Skies also has a tasteful string arrangement around two minute mark followed by a kind of guitar solo that you will find only in albums released in the 70s, the phrasing, the tone, everything is sublime without wandering into the overplaying territory that has plagued many albums in the sub-genre.
A special mention should be made to the song The Conjuration, it is the heaviest song of the album, something you should have already guessed from the title. It has a bombastic intro complete with blast beats and tremolo picking with a short oriental sounding riff just before the blast beats. The lyrics are equally heavy, if you read the lyrics without listening to the song you may mistaken it for a Behemoth song. The album ends with its best moment on An Epilogue to Infinity, a colossal of a song, like every closing song of great albums, the song represents the album's sound and theme in a nutshell. The song's lyrics in a way reminds me of the song Creeping Death by Metallica, with each verse beginning with "I", the song has a beautiful acoustic guitar breakdown around the middle and it feels very Opeth-esque and the same haunting part is used as a motifin the subsequent heavy part, giving the song a sense of melancholy and finality. There is one more song however a bonus instrumental track called A Last Farewell, I don't understand why they kept it has a bonus track, because I feel it's great, the song feels like an aftermath of the spectacle we just heard, it feels like the movie is over and the credits are rolling.
Linus Klausenitzer
Diluvium really impressed me and I was not expecting it to. The album differentiates itself from countless other technical death metal albums in having a soul, the record feels cohesive and ethereal, the production is top notch highlighting each an every instrument making them shine and shine it does. Applauding the bass work of an Obscura album is redundant but I have to do it, Linus Klausenitzer's playing adds another dimension to the compositions and often within the album he takes the lead. The lyrics are some of the best I've heard in the genre even though I could not fathom the theme they are going for in their four part series, however there is this morose and bleak feel throughout and the 'death' theme seems to speak of something more fundamental: The death of time and space.
When all is said (written) and done (listened), this record is the best metal album of the year so far and I don't think anything that is coming this year is going to topple it from my album of the year spot. If there is an album that could be a gateway to technical death metal or death metal in general, this is it and it is a gateway not because it's any less technical than others, it is because a premier technical death metal band has refined their sound and brought out their best album yet.
There is something surreal and transcendental about Opeth, I remember reading an interview where their former guitarist Peter Lindgren described their music as 'death metal with emotions' and that could be a good approximation of the band's sound. The best Swedish metal band in my opinion, they have this undeniable Swedish melancholy in their music, the sadness that can be heard in every Swedish export that includes the great ABBA. Every note, every word that you hear from Opeth is the vision of Mikael Åkerfeldt, the singer, songwriter, guitarist and the sole original member of the band, his influences are as diverse the music he writes. For those who are unaware, Opeth oscillates between two extremes, the brutal heavy death metal side and the mellow, beautiful, melodic side and Åkerfeldt is a bipolar vocalist shifting from deep growls to delicate and emotional clean singing with ease.
Still Life is their fourth studio album, their first album to feature Martín Méndez on bass. It's a concept album and has a story intervened in its seven songs. The album stars of with the best song of the album The Moor, the guitar fade-ins and acoustic guitars for the first 2 minutes sets the mood and atmosphere for what is a very heavy song and in true Opeth fashion it's more than 10 minute long. The Moor introduce us to the story set in about in a pre-Victorian era. The narrator, the person in whose point of view Åkerfeldt is singing returns after several years to the place he was banished from. The narrator didn't have the faith he was expected to have (...I was foul and tainted, devoid of faith..) he was considered a hypocrite by the people (..Branded a Jonah with fevered blood, Ungodly freek, defiler..). The song breaks down into their signature mellow part at around the middle, where the female lead and the reason for the narrator's return is introduced.
"There is no forgiveness in these eyes
for any of you but one.
Dispel the mist for now
Melinda is the reason why I've come"
The people are not happy with his return as reflected in the next song Godhead's Lament, the song is one of the rare instance where there is a chorus, a 'sing along' one at that, it's infectiously catchy for an Opeth song. The song that follows is the shortest in the album, the song with no harsh vocals, the most straight forward song they have written up to that point. Benighted starts of with an acoustic guitar riff similar to the song Never Let Go by English progressive rock band Camel, Åkerfeldt was never shy about his progressive rock influences and the similarity seems to be more of a tribute rather that an act of plagiarism. In the song the narrator calls Melinda to come with him and wonders why she made the decision that disappointed him ("What came and distorted your sight ? saw you benighted by your fright"), the song has a blues rock solo right when the drums kicks in and Åkerfeldt's voice seems to be tender and airy, almost romantic.
The dwellers get restless with every passing day, the leaders among them 'the council of the cross' as introduced in Moonlapse Vertigo learn about the narrator's past affair with Melinda and the reason for his return. The song is almost ballad esque with alternate clean and heavy parts and a sick guitar solo, the song fades into arguably the most beautiful Opeth song of all time Face of Melinda. Its lyrics alone is a poetic masterpiece following an AABB rhyme scheme throughout and its in this song the climax lie. Melinda dedicated herself to God and became a nun, still it doesn't stop the narrator from having her back ("I returned for you in great dismay..Come with me far away to stay") and in the final verse lies the twist
"Endlessly gazing in nocturnal prime
she spoke of her vices and broke the rhyme
but baffled herself with the final line
my promise is made but my heart is thine"
"My promise is made but my heart is thine" is the very essence of this album, I don't think I have heard a more beautiful lyric than this one in Face of Melinda, there is this jazzy feel to the song with fretless bass and drumming with brushes instead of a drum stick.
It's not a happy ending however, in Serenity Painted Death the council murders Melinda.
"Ripped from my embrace
Melinda reflects in shaftes
Red line around her neck
met the earth in silence"
The narrator vows to avenge her death, however it turns to be futile as the narrator is hanged to death by the council in last song White Cluster. The narrator probably meets Melinda in the afterlife, I say probably because the song fades to a stop and then there is a short dreamy clean guitar part that follows, the song fading to silence might be his death and the part that follows might be the afterlife, thats how I see it.
Lets not forget the wonderful artwork by Travis Smith, he has worked with a lot of bands like Death, King Diamond, Katatonia, Avenged Sevenfold and Riverside among others and all of them are great. If you look closely, the reflection of the cross is made wrong on purpose, instead a blurred image of the narrator is drawn implying that the beliefs of the narrator is opposite to what that is represented by the cross.
Opeth is undoubtedly my favorite band of all time, they have everything that I want from music, the darkness, the melancholy, poetic lyrics and the riffs that is so unique to Opeth. They are no longer a death metal band now, having abandoned the death metal vocals in their last three albums and I love the two eras of Opeth equally. Still Life is not their best record which speaks volumes about their discography considering I have praised the album so much. An Opeth album is an experience on its own, even if you don't listen to anything that is posted here thats fine by me but if this post made you to check out an Opeth song, consider me happy and fulfilled.
Ulcerate makes a kind of music that makes you run out of superlatives. Death metal has come a long way from the primitive ways of early Death to dissonant tonalities of Gorguts and technical poly-rhythms of Meshuggah. This 3 piece New Zealand based band manages to capture all of those and offer much more to the ever-growing platter of extreme metal. Ulcerate is widely described as a Technical Death Metal band and that classification can be misleading, there is so much difference between them and a band like say Necrophagist or Nile. There are no guitar solos, no self indulgent instrumental 'epics', instead there is this undeniable psychedelic atmosphere, the extraterrestrial horror that should be heard to gain credence.
Shrines of Paralysis, is their fifth album, my favorite and relatively (very relatively!) their most accessible. Their second opus Everything is Fire is widely considered their best, but I tried that album, except the title track, the songs never won me over. Shrines of Paralysis dials back the dissonance the band is famous for and incorporates more melody in the songwriting but it is still progressive and technical as always with 6 songs exceeding the 7 minute mark. The artwork perfectly captures the essence of the album, the ecdysis of preconceived notions within us and a call for something that is more primal and pure.
Things start of with the fastest and shortest song on the album Abrogation, there is no mellow or ambient introduction, the song puts you right into the middle of chaos. The vocals are suffocating, spaced out and drenched in reverb, the aural equivalent of a floating mist amidst dense woods, an approach best exemplified on Blackwater Park by Opeth (even-though their bassist and vocalist Paul Kelland is not as discernible as Åkerfeldt). The violence gets to an abrupt stop at around 3 minute mark in a true Ulcerate fashion which at times is most disturbing than the parts before it. This album is designed to taken as a whole as the songs blend into each other creating a cohesive and seamless whole. The transition between Yield to Naught and There Are No Saviours is so smooth that it may seem as one track if you are not paying attention. Michael Hoggardruns his fingers all over the fretboard and some of his riffs are dare I say 'hummable' but it's as bleak and oppressive as ever, never settling to a pattern to make you feel comfortable, even coming close to a guitar solo on Extinguished Light during its outro.
The real star of the show is however their drummer Jamie Saint Merat. Drumming in extreme metal has become passable and uninspired over the years. It's difficult to distinguish one drummer from another and thanks to the modern production techniques the drums sound so replaced and precise that you know longer feel that an actual human is playing them. Anaal Nathrakh and Slugdge have released critically acclaimed albums with programmed drums, even Meshuggah released Nothing and Catch Thirtythree with drums programmed by Tomas Haake himself.
Merat distinguishes himself from plethora of blast beat happy drummers by his ingenious use of cymbals. He is as technical as any other drummer out there but he is recognizable with his patterns and tone. Check out the drum play-through video of Extinguished Light to know what I mean, when the band goes through the slow 'ambient' passages he textures them with creative fills and cymbal flourishes.
The highlight of this album is undoubtedly Extinguished Light, the song can suck light out of the Universe. The album reach its emotional zenith towards the end of this song between these two verses
"....In the face of all in reversal
they were all worthless
Pitiful and hopeless
Extinguish this light which befell us
we have proven to be unworthy
Extinguish this light which befell us
Pitch black."
The words "Extinguish this light which befell us" are growled with such conviction and passion that it will make Chuck Schuldiner proud and the last song is thoughtfully titled End the Hope, it's not End of Hope mind you. Reversion is the central theme of the album and it hovers around from the artwork to final word on the final song.
"....End the hope
end the veneration
annul the monolith to which we give rise
total reversion"
Shrines of Paralysis is not the kind of album that you can listen on a sunny day, you have to be prepared for it and it needs time to grow on you. There is one flaw however, I may not be the biggest campaigner against the so called 'Loudness War' but this album is loud, it's a shame that such dynamic music didn't get a dynamic master. Jamie Saint Merat himself produced this album, maybe this was his 'vision', this is the way he wants us to consume, who am I to judge?
Ulcerate is an acquired taste, it needs time and patience from the listener. The music by very nature is unapproachable and disturbing, but it deserves more time and attention from you than anything that is producing heavy music today.
Shrines of Paralysis is available for purchase via Relapse Records.
A lot has been said, written and documented about this album and deservedly so this is a masterpiece the defining moment of an era. If there is a band that introduced me to metal it is Metallica so it will be a shame if this "metal blog" don't have an article about it. On that note here is a review that no one asked for, let the wheels of redundancy turn for one more time.
If you are a newbie and don't know where to start on heavy metal, this might be your gateway drug.
There is one factor that differentiated Metallica from other Trash Metal bands from the era, the ability to write "hooks". You can be all evil, technical and brutal but unless you provide hooks it will never stay with the listener. It was those hooky songwriting that made the last Behemoth record awesome. This album has chock-full of them, every song here is memorable but I have to start some where.
" Take a look to the sky just before you die
It's the last time you will.
Blackened roar massive roar fills the crumbling sky
shattered goal fills his soul with a ruthless sky.
Stranger now are his eyes to this mystery
he hears the silence so loud.
Crack of dawn, all is gone except the will to be
now they see what will be, blinded eyes to see. "
The above lyric is from For Whom the Bell Tolls the album's third song, a song more famous for Cliff Burton's bass solo at start. A song inspired form the novel of the same name, the lyrics discusses the plight of warfare and the protagonist's eventual fall. Add to that a bell intro, a chromatic palm muted riff and a sing along chorus, you have a classic.
Cliff Burton
The song leads to the first Metallica ballad Fade to Black. Everything about the song is sad, the lyrics are suicidal, the opening acoustic guitar invokes a melancholy that you don't normally associate with a trash metal band, even the outro guitar solo gives you no hope. The last line of the song is a thing of beauty.
"...Yesterday seems as though it never existed
death greets me warm, now I will just say goodbye"
I am going to skip some songs because our time is finite (not because they are unworthy) and jump right into Creeping Death, one of the greatest songs ever written. If there is a song that best embodies what heavy metal is all about it's Creeping Death. Everything about this song is metal, the title, the lyrics, the riffs, the "die, die, die..." part in the bridge and the guitar solo. The song is based on the book of Exodus from The Bible about the plague of death of the first born, the lyrics are from the angle of death's perceptive.
"...I rule the midnight air
the destroyer.
Born, I shall soon be there,
deadly mass.
I creep the steps and floor
final darkness.
Blood lambs painted door
I shall pass"
Keeping with the Egyptian theme the song features a cool oriental sounding riff during the "Die, Die, .." chant and thats the part where crowd participation comes up. Imagine around ten thousand people screaming "Die" and suddenly out of nowhere James Hetfield screams
"Die by my hand
I creep across the land
killing first born men"
I could go on writing like this for the other songs like Fight Fire with Fire, the title song and the epic instrumental The Call of Ktulu, but I don't want to lose a potential reader by writing a long post.
This album is a heavy metal monolith, an album that is equally diverse and heavy. It's perfectly structured, starting with a quick-fire song with a change of pace to slower tempos in For Whom the BellTolls to a ballad in Fade to Black and closing out with an epic 9 minute instrumental. The songs play well as an album while retaining their own distinctive flavor.
For many their next album, Master of Puppets is consideredtheir best and I won'targuewith them, in fact the first 4 Metallica albums are absolutely essential. However Ride the Lightning is and will forever will be my favorite Metallica album. It captures the zeitgeist of the 1980s trash metal and even after 34 years not many have come even close to it.
I like my black metal folky (Ulver), majestic (Emperor, Hyperion) and "riffy" (Taake, Immortal). But Gaerea is none of that, they paint a desolate landscape, a land wherein Ulcerate and Behemoth had a child who grew up listing to Post-Metal acts like Neurosis. That child has now come of age and has now incarnated as Unsettling Whispers.
Check out the awesome and insightful review by Master of Muppets on angrymetalguy.com. Angry Metal Guy is the most amazing thing in the whole World Wide Web. It is single handedly responsible for exponential increasing by Metal knowledge (and also my music purchase bills in iTunes).
The background artwork of this site will reflect the music that goes for heavy rotation in my life. I have these phases, few days back it was the Katatonia phase, before that it was Cattle Decapitation phase, before that it was.....leave it, you got the idea. :)
What I write is nothing but a shout on a mountain top, it just reflects back to me. I will read this again and again, but there is a confirmed reader other than me, it's not like I pointed a gun to her head to read the posts, it's just she being herself, which is ?, a great friend who doesn't want to hurt anyone. The epitome of perfect diplomacy. :)
Thanks to you and thanks to anyone who accidentally bumped on this site.
