I have never hidden my feelings towards the
Reign in Blood album - apart from the first and the last track (and the cool intro to Criminally Insane), it feels mostly just like a chaotic mess of underbaked, underwritten tracks that have been meshed together to hide this nature of theirs - somewhat akin to the
Abbey Road medley on the second side of that album (unfortunatelly, King and Hannemann were no Lennon and McCartney as well). Postmortem, however, is one of the more coherent and listenable tracks, the intro riff is actually really cool, though once again, the song's way too weak and stilted compared to stuff like Kreator and Morbid Saint and I don't find it all that memorable.
Dead Embryonic Cells is on the contrary among my less favourite tracks off
Arise (and I love that album in general) and it mostly gets interesting only during the instrumental part (which is great), but as a whole it's more varied. I'll follow blind tribalism.
Sepultura.
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Me and wifey actually saw the Priest only once, on the
Redeemer tour, which was more or less "oh, well, good enough" from me even then. Nowadays it's one of their few albums I almost don't give a relisten to (although I'm also not on the
Firepower hype train myself, to be honest). Battle Cry comes along close to the end of the album and therefore probably gets often overlooked - even by me - though the song itself is pretty solid.
However, I'm more of a doomy bloke than standard heavy metal fan and Grand Magus, whom I've certainly overlooked in the past, are much more to my liking, being much closer to stuff I nowadays usually listen. I won't pretend to be able to discern which of these tracks is better in their own genre and context, but
Grand Magus are much closer to my vibe and once again I'll go with
Perun's choice, in yet another bout of tribalism from me.
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Not to accuse you lot of disingenuity, but the discrepancy in the votes between the Rhapsody and the Nightwish tracks at first made me feel like people are voting Nightwish purely on name recognition alone. And I say that as 1. someone who has Nightwish in his Top-at-least-10 bands ever, 2. loves without reservation pretty much mainly the Tarja era, 3. considers
Oceanborn to be their at least second best album, if not the best one altogether.
And yet, Passion and the Opera is definitely the weakest ling of that album. I can't help it, the downright self-indulgent middle section gives off the vibe of being
way too close to one particular aria in general, which I shan't name here (and one of the few most people know) and the main "meat" of the song mostly sounds like a cheaper (and less energetic) version of Sacrament of Wilderness, especially that part that probably serves as a chorus.
As someone who's really serious about both Passion AND the Opera, let me say that this song is rather
impassive and the opera is at best
Opera 101.
On the contrary, while I acknowledge at least some problems with Gargoyles, Angels of Darkness as well - especially the fact it might be a tad overlong (though that's partly justified by the fact it ends not only the album, but the entire first multi-album saga) and that the cheesy narration is very much love it or hate it - I personally find it hilarious - I can't help but feel both beauty and tremor, a rapturous exaltation in this grotesque, narcissistic chunk of decadent self-indulgence.
The flamenco intro (which, for some reason, was not played by Turilli, but Sascha Paeth), the
ABSOLUTELY FUCKING KILLER MAIN RIFF (one of the best Turilli ever did), the intriguing verse melody, which reminds me of Queen's Innuendo, the typical Rhapsody chorus which doesn't only feel appropriately epic, but also has the typically untrivial harmony made in Rhapsody (which might tickle the fancy of resident Symphony X enjoyers)... but also the much better indulgence by Turilli in the middle, which should have been longer, I could listen to his rabid neoclassicalisms for much longer than just a minute and a half.
Nowadays I'm often not in a mood for 20-minutes long tracks, but this is one of those, whose charm always completely overcomes me. I am able to put this one on repeat and listen to it for several times in a row, in fact I did when I was putting together the nominations (which prolonged the process quite a bit).
RHAPSODY, duh. I'm honestly disappointed with you all.
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Now, although
@Magnus is among my most beloved members here (hi, mate), we often don't see eye to eye, music-wise. So when I saw the next match being Paradise Lost, whom I really like in general, against Tiamat, a band I know only somewhat, a band that's been nominated by him, a band that is overall much more in the annoying "edgy Satanic" mode (at least from the little I know about them) and has the much worse and more annoying vocals to boot, I was absolutely sure my vote would go to PL.
Add to that the fact that although I can't quite decipher the lyrics (at least not without more time and effort that would seem reasonable at this moment), the Paradise Lost lyrics kinda reminded me of the time when I actually used Heidegger's "will to Death" in my thelogical's bachelor's thesis, some two years ago.
But I am surprised to say... despite the "inebriated roar" of the vocals (seriously, mate, what is it with you and singers sounding like they had way too many before the take?), the Tiamat song was actually the more interesting one. The distinctly Swedish-sounding guitars are indeed quite melodious, the keyboards doing their own "Arabian nights interludes" are making it all colourful and fun and between the rather captivating plodding of the main rhythm and the fast section near the end, I actually even got used to the vocals after all.
Icon is, of course, a classic album, but True Belief is mostly "just good", I found other songs to be more memorable and distinct, especially those that toy with their Gothicism a bit more, like on Christendom, which - now that I think of it - reminds me of latter-era Swallow the Sun as well, at least a bit.
I realise I may be biased because of the aspect of surprise and novelty, getting a really good track from an unexpected band, but I think I'll go with
Tiamat here.
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Alice in Chain's best album is opened by two and a half minutes (!) of an off-kilter onslaught, which is nonetheless rabid, desperate and incredibly catchy at the same time - and once again a song that is
with me ever since I've been playing Doom all those years ago (it was later present in
GTA: San Andreas too). In this miniscule form, it is nonetheless the
pars pro toto, the
synecdoche of the entire
Dirt album, which is and always will be a classic one. Man, Cantrell was a monster, wasn't he?
Against them, there are LedZep, who were my first favourite rock band, but since then they have been overplayed to me in a way AiC probably never will be. Plant's vocals are the most significant culprit, of course, but Rock 'n' Roll... is somewhat fun, but after all is said and done, merely a retro-pastiche which lacks most of the charms which this band has used in the past to captivate and entrance me. The rhythm section is good, but other than that, this is a song that could have been written and performed by anyone. When I put on
Zoso, it's because of stuff like Levee or Black Dog or even the overplayed and overexposed Stairway. Or even Battle for Evermore. Not this one.
I feel like a pervert for saying I like
Alice in Chains, but it is what it is, right?
Es muß sein.
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The last match is pretty meh, with Helmet doing their usual Helmetisms and Alter Bridge, whom I've tried listening to many, many times over and I still fail to see the appeal. I can't help but feel like "this is just your basic radio rock", more or less exactly like Foo Fighters, with the same lack of memorable melodies and character. Dunno, I know
Ariana loves them and I like her and I don't want to be offensive to stuff she loves, so I've already said maybe way too much, but I just can't find the hook, the spin to sell them to myself as a great band. And I'm frustrated with that.
Helmet are not exactly my favourite band either, but I feel much more personality in their approach, so
Helmet it is.
