Rival11

I sort of agree with you.

morriscroy

I was already accustomed to stuff with really crappy production, especially when the local college radio station's metal show host was frequently playing Venom songs. (Venom albums were not easily available at local record stores at the time).

By the time I picked up Kill 'Em All, my first thought was that it had a "better production" than Motorhead and Venom.

morriscroy

IIRC, the first american and/or canadian Elektra cd pressings of Killl 'Em All also had "Am I Evil" and "Blitzkrieg". This was likely the Elektra version I found around 1990, which was an impulse buy for me when I noticed it had the two extra songs (from side 2 of the Creeping Death 12" single).

Slightly later in the late 1990s, I couldn't find my old 1990 Elektra cd of Kill 'Em All and I wanted to listened to it again. So I ended up buying a new copy which did not have the two extra songs, and sounded like it was remastered.

A few years later, I finally found my old 1990 Elektra cd of Kill 'Em All (it was in storage) and compared it to the later late-1990s copy (without the two extra songs). It turns out the late-1990s copy was indeed remastered, where the newer 1995 remastering had less bass and sounded more "flat" than the older 1988 mastering. According the discogs, my late-1990s copy was remastered in 1995.

- 1988 (mastered by Bob Ludwig)
https://www.discogs.com/release/6388...ca-Kill-Em-All

- 1995 (remastered by George Marino)
https://www.discogs.com/release/3674...ca-Kill-Em-All

cultshock

True, I was already used to really lo-fi sounding albums by Venom, Bathory and Hellhammer (which I heard before KEA) so Metallica's debut was a step up production-wise compared to those albums.

Trout

I always hated how the vocals sounded on a lot of the West Coast/Bay area thrash albums . It sounded like it was recorded in an empty rest-room.

morriscroy

Not just the vocals.

Even worse is when there are too many parts of album mix flooded with artificial reverb, that it sounds like a messy sludge for heavier stuff. The dichotomy of this was stuff produced/mixed by Michael Wagener. For lighter stuff, Wagener's productions sounded ok such as Alice Cooper, Dokken, Accept, Ozzy Osbourne, etc ....

In contrast, Wagener's heavier stuff sounded like a messy sludge with too much artificial reverb flooding the mix, such as Skid Row "Slave To The Grind", Flotsam and Jetsam "No Place For Disgrace", Megadeth "So Far So Good So What", etc ...

Trout

New Wolves in the Throne Room- “Crypt of Ancestral Knowledge” on September 29th.

cultshock

I was just thinking the other day about how many metal band names are Tolkien/LOTR inspired.
The ones I thought of:

-Burzum
-Cirith Ungol
-Gorgoroth
-Carach Angren
-Isengard
-Amon Amarth

I googled it and there are tons more bands that I've never heard, like Mordor, Ringwraith, Sauron, etc.

Showing once again that metal is the geekiest of music genres. I wonder if the whole hard rock/metal connection to Tolkien started with Zeppelin ("Ramble On", "Battle of Evermore", "Misty Mountain Hop").

Trout

Don’t forget Morgoth.

EddieMoney

So I picked up the Blu-ray for Testament's "Dark Roots of Thrash." Am I going crazy, or is this live performance just horribly overdubbed? It's virtually unwatchable.

morriscroy

Listening to the Denner/Shermann "Masters of Evil".

Except for the absence of King's falsetto voice, the music sounds like old school Mercyful Fate. It was obvious these two were the main music writers on Don't Break the Oath, and not King Diamond.

morriscroy

I decided to pick up that Sodom "40 Years At War" compilation cd of re-recorded stuff. I found myself listening to it quite a few times, since getting it in the mail earlier today.

Frankly, I largely stoppped listening to Sodom after the "Mortal Way of Live" album. At the time circa 1989-1990, I picked up Agent Orange and the Ausgebombt records but only ever listened to them once, which I thought it sounded like they were trying to copy Megadeth. After that, I largley didn't care anymore about buying further Sodom titles.

Gradually over the 1990s and early 2000s, I picked up whatever discarded Sodom cds found in $5 dump bins or $2 bins at used record stores. The "latest one" I had was M-16, which I only ever listened to once and found it kinda unmemorable. For whatever reasons, I found these post-Persecution albums were largely unmemorable and only listened to them once or twice.


So listening to this "40 Years at War" cd, I largely skipped the first three songs and played the remaining 14 songs on replay. I'm too familiar with Sepulchral Voice, After The Deluge, and Electrocution to have an unbiased perspective. This is due to back in the mid->late 1980s, where I use to listen to Persecution Mania and Obsessed by Cruelty over and over again all the time. (I even picked up the 2-cd pack back in the 1990s, which had both Persecution Mania and Obsessed By Cruelty in single slipcase box).

morriscroy

Rumor has it that Sodom is releasing an ep in November, which appears to be remaining five tracks which were left off of "40 Years At War". These remaining five tracks were in the deluxe box set variant of "40 Years of War", where I only recognized the tracks Witching Metal and Equinox.

https://www.discogs.com/release/2499...-Hell-Of-Sodom

morriscroy

As far as I can tell, these fourteen tracks (from after Persecution Mania) on "40 Years At War" sounds like respectable thrash that is well written and played.

cultshock

I'll have to listen to that, although it will be weird hearing these two guitarists without King's vocals involved. Don't Break the Oath did have two songs written solely by King Diamond, including the amazing "Come to the Sabbath".



I originally stopped listening after Agent Orange, but Persecution Mania is still my favorite of those (plus the Expurse of Sodomy EP, "Sodomy and Lust" is a fantastic track). I had the Obsessed by Cruelty/Persecution Mania 2 CD set as well, but found it annoying as the sound level was so low on the discs, I don't want a brickwalled release, but those were just too low (the vinyl I used to have of those albums had much better sound). I still need to check out the 40 Years at War release.

morriscroy

I figured King was the guy who wrote all the lyrics, and some of the music. Though how much of the latter, was not easy to disentangle from his other collaborators (ie. Larocque, Shermann, Denner, etc ...). IIRC in some interviews in old metal magazines back in the day, King mentions that he does most of his music writing on a guitar.

In the case of Denner / Shermann, this the definitive case where their writing is completely disconnected from King Diamond. It becomes obvious they were the master guitar riffs writers and song arrangements behind Mercyful Fate back in the day.

By the time of King Diamond's "Them" album, it is largely a King / LaRocque writing collaboration.

cultshock

I think that especially the disconnect between Shermann and King lead to the initial breakup of the band, they were both heading into different directions, with Shermann leaving and forming the poppier band Fate, and King taking Denner and Timi Hansen with him for his solo project (while drummer Kim Ruzz seemingly fell off the face of the planet). BTW, I absolutely adore that first run of albums, the self-titled EP, Melissa and Oath, what a run of quality albums!

Trout

Tomb Mold has a new album, “The Enduring Spirit”, dropping on October 13th. It sounds like they went into a more technical death metal direction, so I’ll probably pass.

Sulphur Aeon is releasing “Seven Crowns and Seven Seals” on the the 13th also. I’ll probably get this one.

morriscroy

Here's a recent King Diamond interview (from October 2022), where he describes the writing process with LaRocque and Shermann.

https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco...-king-diamond/


Here's the passage of interest:


CBS SF: How different is the writing experience between working with the Hank Sherman again in Mercyful Fate versus the writing process you have with your own band?

King Diamond: The process is very much the same, but I write, of course, differently for Mercyful Fate than I do for King Diamond. I think in different ways. In King Diamond, I would say even the writing becomes more theatrical than with Mercyful Fate because I know that we have actors, we have all these things that are going to happen on stage. And Andy knows that too. I had the story for The Institute and he has heard the story. He sent me eight songs. They are not finished. I think two of them are close to being finished on the musical side, from him. I have a bunch of stuff. But it's the same thing that happens; Andy comes with songs, Hank brought me 10 songs.

We are working on song number two at the same time as we are working on the first one that will be the single that comes out probably right after this tour. We have gotten so close with it. But typically with Mercyful Fate, Hank comes with a new song and it's not quite finished. It might have an intro and an outro but it's not quite done. I write my own songs of course, but with the collaborative stuff, he brings me the song and I become the man with the scalpel, kind of. I cut this part here and then say, "Copy and paste here!" and "Can be used that solo piece to sing? Because it's much better than this other thing." and so on. And it's always been like that. That's how we did Don't Break the Oath. It's exactly the same mood in what we're doing right now between us.

So it's easy. It's fun to actually really experience this thing this way, because it's straight what we used to do. And I will call Hank -- when he brought "The Jackal of Salzburg" it was about seven minutes and 24 seconds, I think, and now it's eight minutes and 54 seconds. That's just how it happens. Sometimes it goes the other way, you know? And it's happens with Andy too. When he brings me stuff, are there certain things I will hear. "Oh man, that's not good for a verse. I need more of this and more of that." He might try and change something. Or I will give him a suggestion like, "Could you try maybe this or that? Or move it to this key? Or can we split this up in half here?" We do these things and it comes back from them the next time and I'll say, "Ooooooh, that's much better for me now!"

And they hear it themselves too, you know? After the scalpel has been out there, they'll say, "Oh wow! Now this really is coming together in a cool way!" I have a very good ability there to do these things. There's a second song we're working on, it's about four minutes long, for Mercyful Fate, and it's also amazing. It's so old fashioned in style, I really like it. And the same thing goes for the King Diamond songs, where it's back to my philosophy with vocals where all vocals are lead vocals. That's how I used to see it always.

But there was a period where it was kind of like you get told, "Maybe you don't need to do so much with those backing vocals. You have the lead here." That's not how I see it. Sometimes I like it quiet and condensing from right to left through the whole stereo picture if that's what creates the right feel for it. So I'll do anything to create these crazy things that I feel belong there. And that goes back to all the vocals being lead vocals. It's got to be full power. And the same with other things too, the guitar solos. It's very, very old feeling we have back for both bands, which is it's so refreshing. It's really nice.