morriscroy

(More generally).

The only scenarios where the album cover artwork (or lack thereof) made any difference in my record shopping habits, were only really for "blind buys" where I never heard the band previously AND they were on known label such as metalblade, combat, roadrunner, engima, etc .... or on a major record label. For example, such as stuff like Bathory as I mentioned earlier in this thread.

Further back in time, some impluse "blind buys" I made based purely on the record cover and/or song titles without ever hearing the band's music previously, was stuff like:

- first WASP album
Motley Crue - Shout At The Devil
Black N Blue - Nasty Nasty
Cinderella - Night Songs
Bon Jovi - 7800 Fahrenheit
Iron Maiden - Killers
Twisted Sister - Stay Hungry
Dokken - Breaking The Chains
Lita Ford - Out For Blood
Keel - The Final Frontier
TNT - Tell No Tales
Queensryche - The Warning
Stryper - Soldiers Under Command
Y&T - In Rock We Trust
The Cult
Ted Nugent - Little Miss Dangerous




In the specific case of Exodus, I can see how the boring album covers after Bonded By Blood might have been a huge "turn off" as potential blind buys for a metalhead that was a few years younger than me.

Traxan

Tuomas Holopainen of Nightwish has a side project: a black metal band. Seriously. It was inactive for 20 years but just released a new record.

morriscroy

When did this first started happening? This wasn't done back in the day.

Awhile ago I picked up the past three Leaves' Eyes albums, where the respective second cd discs had the entire album without any lead vocals.


Nowadays in spite of any previous "brain damage", I do make an effort to be agnostic about musical genres. I'll give many things a first listening, to see whether it warrants a second or subsequent listening session(s).

With that being said, I never really got into "industrial" type music. (ie. Stuff like kmfdm, ministry, front line assembly, front 242, etc ...). The only thing remotely "industrial" I listened to back in the day, was maybe the first Fear Factory album + remix ep in the early-mid 1990s.

morriscroy

Listening to a Dokken Greatest Hits album which turns out to be a 2010 re-recording of their hit songs from the 80s.

Even though the production is much heavier and cleaner sounding than the original versions, these 2010 re-recordings sound almost "lifeless" with no character. It sounds like Don Dokken was just "phoning it in" on his own record of classic songs.

Also it seems like Don Dokken has a harder time doing some of the higher pitched vocal lines/screams, that he just does some of these vocal lines/screams at an octave lower than their original versions.

morriscroy

Listening to Ad Infinitum chapters 1 and 2.

Sounds like generic symphonic metal.

morriscroy

Earlier today and yesterday, listening to the first two Blaze Bayley solo albums after he was pushed out of Iron Maiden.

"Silicon Messiah" was released around the same time as Iron Maiden's "Brave New World", with the former largely being seemingly forgotten. The writing sounded like what might have been a hypothetical "third Blaze Maiden" album, in an alternate universe where Bruce Dickinson had never rejoined Iron Maiden in 1999.

Blaze likely had a huge backlog of songs written which Iron Maiden didn't use during his tenure, which turned out to be decent metal songs on "Silicon Messiah" and "Tenth Dimension".

morriscroy

Listening to Assassin' first two albums: "Upcoming Terror" and "Interstellar Experience".

They were another long forgotten mid-late 1980s thrash band from West Germany on Steamhammer/SPV.

"Upcoming Terror" sounds rather mediocre, with generic thrash songs with an early production of Kalle Trapp. (Kalle Trapp produced the first Pestilence album, Destruction's "Release From Agony", etc ... and later the first four Blind Guardian albums),

"Interstellar Experience" sounds like a typical Harris Johns production from that time period. Better sounding than "Upcoming Terror", though still somewhat generic average writing.

beavis69

Decibel released their year end list. I've listened to most of the albums on the list and there are some good albums on there and some head scratchers as expected. None of the choices I think are bad though. I'm suprised to see Iron Maiden and certainly Carcass so high. I thought that Gatecreeper was an EP so not sure why it is on the list. That Khemmis album hasn't come out yet, I think this Friday, but the two songs released so far have me super pumped for that one (same with Exodus although history would tell me its going to be average).

I'm really suprised to not see Sanguisugabogg on the list. That was one of the most hyped releases of the year and I thought it more than lived up to expectations.

40. Rivers of Nihil, The Work, Metal Blade
39. Darkthrone, Eternal Hails……, Peaceville
38. Body Void, Bury Me Beneath This Rotting Earth, Prosthetic
37. Frozen Soul, Crypt of Ice, Century Media
36. Mare Cognitum, Solar Paroxysm, I, Voidhanger
35. Silver Talon, Decadence and Decay, M-Theory
34. Spectral Wound, A Diabolic Thirst, Profound Lore
33. The Ruins of Beverast, The Thule Grimoires, Van
32. Enforced, Kill Grid, Century Media
31. Knoll, Interstice, Self-released
30. Archspire, Bleed the Future, Season of Mist
29. Dungeon Serpent, World of Sorrows, Nameless Grave
28. Exodus, Persona Non Grata, Nuclear Blast
27. Hulder, Godslastering Hymns of a Forlorn Peasantry, Iron Bonehead
26. Craven Idol, Forked Tongues, Dark Descent
25. Deafheaven, Infinite Granite, Sargent House
24. Rudimentary Peni, The Great War, Sealed
23. Stormkeep, Tales of Othertime, Van
22. Genghis Tron, Dream Weapon, Relapse
21. Gatecreeper, An Unexpected Reality, Closed Casket Activities
20. Cannibal Corpse, Violence Unimagined, Metal Blade
19. Worm, Foreverglade, 20 Buck Spin
18. Unto Others, Strength, Roadrunner
17. Full of Hell, Garden of Burning Apparitions, Relapse
16. Cerebral Rot, Excretion of Mortality, 20 Buck Spin
15. Amenra, De doorn, Relapse
14. Lingua Ignota, Sinner Get Ready, Sargent House
13. The Silver, Ward of Roses, Gilead Media
12. Skepticism, Companion, Svart
11. Fucked Up, Year of the Horse, Tankcrimes
10. Wolves in the Throne Room, Primordial Arcana, Relapse
9. Iron Maiden, Senjutsu, BMG
8. Lamp of Murmuur, Submission and Slavery, Self-released
7. Converge, Bloodmoon: I, Epitaph/Deathwish Inc
6. Hooded Menace, The Tritonus Bell, Season of Mist
5. Panopticon, …And Again into the Light, Bindrune
4. Apparition, Feel, Profound Lore
3. Tribulation, Where the Gloom Becomes Sound, Metal Blade
2. Khemmis, Deceiver, Nuclear Blast
1. Carcass, Torn Arteries, Nuclear Blast

morriscroy

(More generally).

If the person who make such lists do not explain what criteria they are using to assign a numerical ranking, then I assume it isn't much more than that particular person's personal playlist.

Basically not much more than a person's unique musical tastes/opinions masquerading as a "bigger official year end list".

beavis69

Decibel is a congolmiration of all the staff I guess, so I assume they write their choices and rank them and this is the result. I generally don't like to call anything I make a "best of" since there are literally 100s of releases a year just in metal alone. My list are always just my favorite albums I was able to get to. I mean right off the top of my head I know of at least three albums not on this list that would make mine (Sanguisugabogg, Kekht Arakh, and Creeping Death). Sanguis just seemed like such a large omission considering the word of mouth hype they had leading up to that release.

morriscroy

With that being said, I hardly recognize any of the bands/albums on that "decibel" year end list.

I only recognize the really old acts like iron maiden, carcass, darkthrone, exodus, and cannibal corpse. Of these acts, I only ever listened to the Iron Maiden album Senjutsu. I haven't listened to the other four albums (yet).


I guess I am not a prime audience for their magazine. (After skimming through their web site's front page and some articles, and not seeing much of interest).

morriscroy

This has also been the case for me, over the past 30+ years or so.

Back in the day, I don't remember many albums which had a huge "word of mouth hype". Most of the "hype" I read about in then-current metal magazines like Circus, Hit Parader, etc ..., were mostly of the tabloid "yellow journalism" variety. Basically debauchery stories of backstage antics and other bad behavior. Rarely anything about the music/albums.

I more or less stopped reading metal publications when I stopped buying metal records, sometime around the turn of 1990 or so. So if there was any "word of mouth hype" about particular then-newly released albums, it must happened long after 1990.

The only highly "hyped" album I can recall from that time period, was something like "Cop Killer" by IceT's metal band Body Count. It made it into the daily news where some politicians were talking it about, such as then-vice president dan quayle.

https://www.upi.com/Archives/1992/07...2498711345600/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cop_Killer_(song)

beavis69

Sanguis released a demo in 2019 that was really well received online. They then became known for having more shirts than albums as they released small print shirts constantly through 2020 while recording the album. So their name was out there without ever having released a full length. They seem to be polarizing, some because of the merch and some because people don't care for their version of death metal, but I personally really liked what they put out.

I think there was alot of word of mouth hype around around bands in the late 90s. I mean I don't recall Slipknot ever being mentioned in any mainstream press, but heard about them when someone was passing a cd player around after soccer practice in High School.

morriscroy

If something like this happened back in the 1980s, it was likely amongst the really "underground" tape trading networks. These tape traders were the folks who were highly tuned in to the gossip of then-unsigned bands, where they would know which bands were on the rise.

From stuff I have read over the years, there are stories about this happening with the Exodus demo tapes (though no tshirts). There was purportedly a lot of anticipation for Bonded by Blood, for over a year before it was released.


Going back further in time, allegedly the earlier issues of Kerrang (and maybe "metal forces") was the equivalent of a "watercool talk" for the nwobhm "new wave of british heavy metal" scene. It would be interesting to read some really old Kerrang issues to see which nwobhm bands were highly hyped at the time, whom never became huge rockstars.

morriscroy

The only times something like this (or similar) ever happened for me, it was usually a friend recording a "mix tape" for me. Walkmans were still too expensive at the time.

More likely was somebody playing a record while we were playing video games. This was where I first heard stuff like KISS, Led Zeppelin, AC DC, etc ...

Trout

Worm, Cannibal Corpse, Spectral Wound, and WITTR would all make my top albums so far this year.

Phodg

I used to know Blaze back in the day when he was with Wolfsbane. Not a great band on record, but always a party live.

Phodg

Carcass, Maiden, Rudimentary Peni, Unto Others, Memoriam, Darkthrone, At The Gates, Sarke and Massacre spring to mind for me. Plus probably the new Exodus although I haven't listened to it yet. But I liked the singles.

cultshock

I forgot about those albums (I used to have the former on vinyl and the latter on cassette). I agree on your assessment, I don't recall either one being any more than average generic thrash, nothing special. But then again, I don't think I've heard them in over 30 years.


I'm loving the new Cradle of Filth album, their best since Midian IMO. Can't believe it didn't make the Decibel list, it will certainly be in my top ten this year.

morriscroy

I would agree in regard to the wolfsbane studio records around 1990 or so. (I have never seen them live). Most of their songs from the time sounded rather average, and not particularly memorable.


From reading various Blaze interviews, he mentions that he really learned how to write better songs from collaborating closely with Steve Harris during his time in maiden.

Josh-da-man

I didn't even know there was a new Cradle of Filth album out.

morriscroy

In a more general sense, for most bands I have no idea whether they are still releasing new albums or not. The only time I know is from googling a particular band.

cultshock

Yep, it came out last month. It's very solid, even the two "bonus" songs are great.

I still follow new releases from bands, labels or certain genres that I like. It's impossible to keep up with everything (I don't think I've even heard a quarter of Decibel's year end list) but I do what I can, still lots of good metal albums being released these days.

beavis69

I’ve found bandcamp to be the best place to find bands from smaller labels or even independent releases. I’m fact, other than a few from nocleansinging, I think it’s where I found all my music this year.

I also like the fact that that when I purchase a cd I get the digital immediately. This has come in handy with a lot of European release since they take weeks to get to me.

morriscroy

Nowadays most of the previously unknown stuff (to me), I find from semi-random googling and searchs on youtube.


Typically on youtube, I'll do searches for cover versions of older classic songs to see what pops up.

For example, this was how I first came across a band like "Evil Invaders" after I did a youtube search for covers of "Violence and Force" (originally by Exciter).

Another case of this was doing youtube searches for covers of Venom songs, which was how I first came across the spinoff band "Venom Inc" that featured former Venom guitarist Jeff Mantas and former Venom drummer Abaddon. (At the time, I had no idea Mantas and Abaddon were still playing Venom style stuff).