After the previous track, I almost wrote Armored Saint off, but this is much better, indeed, this album - which I tried out after
Knicks prompting - is quite cool from the very first track throughout. This song is also just as guitar heavy, maybe a bit monotonous as far as the chorus is concerned, being more of a "groove" track. A
banger, not a
bop, if you will.
I love Sabbath as much as everyone does - more, possibly, since I like them even before they became Rainbath, but the
Born Again album is really uneven. The sound, the lackadaisical approach to songwriting and melodies... Trashed, the previous song we had from this album, was funny and somewhat catchy in the worst way imaginable, ZTH is much more "serious". The Butler-Iommi groove is actually great and the song is more crushing than anything tey've done since the Ozzy years. In fact, with this type of somewhat repetitive epic, it brings forth memories of Megalomania, being an attempt to revisit that same spring. Also has more variation throughout.
A close win for
Black Sabbath.
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Man, with the next match, I really don't know. I'm far from being a thrash afficionado nowadays (ask me 10 years ago, bruv), so the comparisons and preferences somewhat resemble an invocation of past fancies.
So, there's one of the "lesser" bands, Demolition Hammer, doing actually great and hectic retro thrash ... and one of my overall favourite thrash bands, Kreator, knee-deep in their darkest era, with Mille turning into a goth bird all of a sudden and delivering what sounds like an ex-thrash band doing their version of
the most mysterious song on the internet twenty years before it became an internet meme. I won't deny Endorama (and the album as a whole) has a quite unique atmosphere, but I'd leave the execution to other bands.
I'll be predictable and conservative and pick the old school
Demolition Hammer.
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It is true that nowadays I tend to prefer listening to Cannibal Corpse than to Death (I've heard and loved a fair share of the latter, but there's probably a limit at how much Schuldiner you might enjoy in your life), but oversaturation and changing tastes aside, we are doing "greatest metal song cup" and Death would seem a much more competent competitor than the Man with a Can, Nibal Corpse. Hi, Nibal! (sorry, I stole that joke from Mark Prindle). Though... is it so?
I admit that the last Death album is maybe a bit overtuned in its complexity - there's this jagged, neurotic element to the songwriting that always made me feel like it was a bit of the letdown after the utter perfection of
Symbolic. But I get why
Kid picked it.
I feel like a stupid, vulgar plebe, but I'm grooving to the CC song much more. It has a fuller sound, it's much groovier and ... "fun" in a way. Here you go, from what used to be one of this forum's resident prog afficionados. Well, I guess
I feel like a bully, a biker throwing some poor bespectacled laddy in the dustbin, but all my macho instincts tell me I should vote for
Cannibal Corpse, sorry,
Kid.
Also, since we're talking
The Wretched Spawn, Frantic Disembowelment would be an even better pick, especially against Scavenger, being one of the most tech death songs by Corpse I remember off the top of my head.
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Fuck, what is this next match? Not only are these songs completely incomparable, genre-wise, but both are really,
really good songs from two of my most favourite bands.
Crack the Skye is a weird album. It is definitely the one to go to if you want to see Mastodon at their most proggy, it has a unique atmosphere and I usually see it being endorsed with that old "I don't care about Mastodon/metal in the slightest, but
this album is actually great". On the other hand, the atmosphere is (at least subjectively) rather oppressive, foreboding and gloomy and with most of it being written (and sung by) Brent, it overdoes it in the psychedelic and neurotic angle a bit, giving it a possible quality of the embodiment of a bad trip. I have felt both of these approaches in the album at various times and I still waver in my relationship towards it.
And I say that as someonw who actually nominated one of the songs in this cup. It's a complex affair is what I'm saying.
Divinations is one of the less "oppressive" tracks (for that, see Quintessence, for example) and although I always felt it was one of the "lesser" tracks on the album, it was this summer while on holiday in Znojmo when I realised I needed to hear it as I was making a trip to the market. It finally fully clicked and I had the song on repeat for two days at least. Its catchiness is of the subtler sort, in other words, and I mean both the chorus and the bridge. Also, the banjo in the intro is a cool touch - and a fitting one, as Brent's spidery guitarwork is obviously influenced by him beginning on that instrument at first.
Despite me discovering them in the height of my "prog" period (which never really left, to be honest, although it's nowadays sharing the spotlight with power metal as well), it was The Spirit Carries On that was the first song I loved, both off
Scenes from a Memory and by DT in general. In fact, I think I remember playing it on air back when I was a rock radio DJ and didn't know or care much about Dream Theater yet. This gospellish, distinguished ballad, almost manipulative in its melodiousness and unabashed sentimentality, topped with one of Petrucci's most Olfieldesque solos (though I hear some Gilmour influence there as well) and... you know, the majestic rendition of the chorus in the end... it makes the song just as poignant outside the context of the album as within.
In fact it's the solo that does it for me - this is one of the solos I'm proud to know by memory in its entirety.
Fuck. Fuck it.
I can't.
DREAM THEATER.
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The two Holocaust songs are both fine, methinks, I'm not sure which I like better, so I'll vote for the one nominated by a member, instead of the one included because of some impersonal list -
Heavy Metal Mania.
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There were two ballads I wanted to include in my nominations, one was Wander, the second - which I decided not to include, because of the limited number of possible nominations - was Strato's 4000 Rainy Nights. The former was also a song I included on a special request from my wife (though I wanted to nominate it anyway), since this was the first Kamelot song she loved... leading her into a band which she now often plays with our kids - who very much love both the
Karma and
Epica albums (clever lads). All the more surprising, since she usually doesn't like ballads very much.
My write-up is going to suck, because the particular charm of this song - which I also recognised immediately during the first listen - is rather undescribable. It has this je
ne sais quoi that makes the chorus endearing and immensely emotional; the melody is instantly recognisable and memorable, yet not groundbreaking or anything (possibly since it mostly glides around the underlying chords, those being the somewhat rarer i-VI-iv-VII progression), Khan is still unsurpassed as a Kamelot vocalist, the solo is simplistic, but tugs at the right heartstrings, but I don't know what it is, really - the charm of the song is much greater than the sum of its parts and I don't know how to properly speak about it. Let's just say that it is a song that should have been cheesy, yet in the end is actually quite beautiful... and was my immediate go-to pick when I thought I would include
any type of ballad.
Wind Rose are actually a very good band - and consistent! I'd recommend everyone to check out the
Wintersaga and
Stonehymn albums - and I don't say that just because I am partial to them because of a common Italian heritage. I admit that the vocals are not my favourite style in power metal - it's the "Sabaton" type, not the "Avantasia" type, is what I mean - and this song gets a bit monotonous, but it's a good one nonetheless. Doesn't bring me the emotional high its opponent does, but that was probably expected.
And I'd say by picking the ballad, I'm more respectful towards my heritage anyway.
Kamelot.
