"Badlands" seems to continue the trend of Metal Church songs to have nice clean parts and complex song structures, but merely OK vocals and not very memorable vocal melodies. The chorus here is better than what I've generally heard from them so far, but it's still not great. I hear a lot of early Queensrÿche elements in their sound, but it's from the same time period, so who knows who was influencing whom. Ew, that guitar solo wasn't very good, but I liked the harmonized rhythm part underneath it. The harmonization in the outro sounds sickly and bad, though. Hmm. "Deliver Us From Evil" has a nice medieval acoustic intro and a solid Celtic-flavored main riff. The singer is fine, though the vocal phrasing is pretty bad, and I'm not really on board with the nursery rhyme lyrics. The drumming is great, as expected from Zonder. I like the extended solo a lot, too. Well, both of these songs are OK overall, but have some obvious flaws. In the end I think
@Perun's nominee holds together a little bit better than its competitor.
Winner: Warlord - "Deliver Us From Evil"
"World Eater" is very crunchy, very repetitive, and has a bit of a garage band sound to it. The Cookie Monster vocals and pot-banging sections are terrible, as expected, though the vocals are toward the less annoying end of the spectrum. There were a couple of decent guitar ideas in here, but that's about it. "Immortal Rites" has overly busy riffage and vocals somewhere between bad non-melodic thrash and very tame Cookie Monster, but at least it keeps new musical ideas coming at a decent pace. Not a fan of either song, but
@KiDDo's nominee was less annoying.
Winner: Morbid Angel - "Immortal Rites"
"The Year The Sun Died" has a very atmospheric clean intro that flows nicely into the verse. I like the riffs, the solo, and most of the vocal lines here, though the chorus could be stronger. Good stuff. "Divine Intervention" is another Slayer song with the same general pros and cons as the rest -- interesting riffs, bad vocals (more annoying than usual here, with lots of nonmelodic screaming), and generally bad, directionless solos. There are a couple of atmospheric sections that are nice, but that can't salvage the rest. Easy call for
@Confeos's nominee here.
Winner: Sanctuary - "The Year The Sun Died"
"Embrace The Endless Ocean" has a nice tapped intro that flows into a similar evolving riff. The vocals are awful Cookie Monster garbage, but I like the melodic guitar leads. Great atmosphere in general. If this song had clean vocals I'd probably like it a lot, but alas, it doesn't. "Cosmic Pessimism" has a bouncy 90s alt-rock feel. Can't really get into the spoken word vocals, but at least they're not actively annoying like the throaty stuff in the chorus. The song doesn't really go anywhere until the guitars take a darker twist toward the end, and then there's a hard left turn into atmospheric clean guitar and strings. Well, the songwriting in the Amon Amarth song is much better, but the vocals in the At The Gates song are a bit less annoying overall. Congratusorrylations,
@Night Prowler, but I'm going to reward the better-written song here.
Winner: Amon Amarth - "Embrace The Endless Ocean"
"Death Row" has OK riffage, terrible production, and lame half-sung vocals. The solo's pretty decent, at least. Started checking the clock at the 3.5 minute mark. Not a fan. "Destiny Falls To Ruin" sets an effective mood, has interesting-enough guitars, and the vocals and melodies are pretty good. I like the uptempo bridge that leads into the first solo, though the solo itself is merely OK. The second solo is much better. The track didn't wow me, but it was pretty decent overall -- and sorry
@DJ James, but that's more than enough for
@MindRuler's nominee to take this match.
Winner: Solitude Aeturnus - "Destiny Falls To Ruin"
"The Seven Gates Of Hell" has a nice atmospheric intro and pretty good riffs. The singer isn't good, and he's only half-singing here, but I've heard much worse. There are some interesting eastern elements to the solo, but the guitar is buried in the mix there for some reason. I'm also not sure why they bothered to do the fade-out fake-out, only to do an abrupt fade-out again after the song comes back. Weird. A not-very-good song with some good ideas in it, I suppose. "Instant Death" has great riffs, but the half-Lemmy vocalist isn't the best, and the vocal melodies aren't memorable. The solo and the following section also feel way too rushed, but the screams there actually work pretty well. Not thrilled with either track, but sorry
@Magnus, I found more to like in
@DJ James's nominee.
Winner: Razor - "Instant Death"
