Thread of Metal

[Spacewalk]

AAAIIIIEEEEEEE!

[sabrage]

I’ve been listening to Cryptopsy almost exclusively for the past few days.

[Pink_Gregory]

Not slow enough though

[Skhalt]

Here comes my contribution to the greatest of all threads with some technical death metal, courtesy of a talented French band called Carcariass:

[Spacewalk]

12 Slays Of Christmas #1: Macabre - Sinister Slaughter

Sinister Slaughter rules, period, and that’s why I made it the first album of the season. Equally horrifying and hilarious and catchy as all hell to boot, you’ll probably be humming any of the songs on here well into the week. It’s some really ripping grind and the vocals are hysterical, swear to Satan that it will be in your stocking this year.

[Spacewalk]

12 Slays Of Christmas #2: Exodus - Bonded By Blood

It’s a charmer. Paul Baloff is a big part of that charm but you can’t discount the contribution from the rest of the band when they’re dead set on offering up a feast of pure, enjoyable thrash that just rips from start to finish. Let’s just forget about the 2008 rerecording. Actually let’s pretend it doesn’t exist instead.

[Spacewalk]

12 Slays Of Christmas #3: Slaughter - Strappado

Strappado reissues are pretty common so you won’t need to search high and low for it. It’s Hellhammer! It’s Slayer! It’s Hellhammer playing Reign In Blood and if that thought doesn’t immediately get you thirsty for hair metal blood then you aren’t into metal my friend.

[Spacewalk]

12 Slays Of Christmas #4: Manilla Road - Voyager

My favourite album by my favourite band and the best one they’ve done since Mark Shelton restarted 'em in the year 2000. Totally fucking heavy, totally fucking severe and as ancient as the gods themselves. The answer to the Hammerheart question if it ever was one.

[Spacewalk]

12 Slays Of Christmas #5: Manowar - Hail To England

It’s funny that the band that commanded the wimps and the poseurs to leave the hall but they ended up leaving it themselves eventually but Hail To England is from their glory days (the Ross the Boss years) when they were the cream of the power metal crop and is the perfect point for any new fan to jump in and raise the sign of the hammer high above their head. Traditional to a fault but not sounding much like anyone else at the time or this time even.

[Spacewalk]

12 Slays Of Christmas #6: Cathedral - The Ethereal Mirror

Totally not fist raising metal. Totally not Forest Of Equilibrium part 2 either. More rock, less doom. More psychedelia, less misery although there’s still enough of that. Purple flares and silk shirts. Midnight Mountain’s even got clapping on it (oh how we all laughed at that “disco doom” nonsense). Yet it remains heavyasfuck throughout. If Forest… was not like Siege this is even less so.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsuFWWk-ke4

[Spacewalk]

12 Slays Of Christmas #7: W.A.S.P. - The Crimson Idol

I guess it’s their Operation: Mindcrime. Being a band that’s known for being W.A.S.P. dropping an album like this is pretty gob smacking even if it started out as a Blackie Lawless solo album. Looking at the cover you can probably tell what you’re getting: out with the immature fun of sex, blood and exploding codpieces, in with maturity, darkness, reflection and five-odd ballads which is either not as bad as you’re expecting or it’s a case of me going soft.

[Spacewalk]

12 Slays Of Christmas #8: Black Sabbath - Heaven and Hell

If there’s one Sabbath album you should own it’s definitely H&H even if it doesn’t sound much like a Black Sabbath album. I love the first six of theirs dearly but I reckon this is the one that’s the most enjoyable for repeated listens because it’s the catchiest and has the best vocals. It also helps having songs like Neon Knights, Children Of the Sea and Heaven and Hell. No wonder it revitalised Tony Iommi’s career.

[sabrage]

http://i.imgur.com/pC3wOnb.png

Immortal always did have better chops than their Norwegian friends.

[Spacewalk]

12 Slays Of Christmas #9: Tank - Honour & Blood

Along with Warfare and Girlschool Tank were Motörhead’s bastard children but by this point they had started to break away. And just like Warfare they weren’t adverse to covering a pop song or two. Dependable is the word, it’s good to have a Tank album or two around when you’re in the mood for no frills hard rock/metal because they won’t let you down. It’s that Motörhead element in full effect.

[Spacewalk]

12 Slays Of Christmas #10: Death - Leprosy

Leprosy got remastered this year so if you don’t have it already now you’ve got no excuse. Leprosy slays, it sounds as good now as it did back then and is required listening if you’re into metal and not just death metal. A lesson on how things should be done.

[Spacewalk]

12 Slays Of Christmas #11: Dark Angel - Darkness (fucking) Descends

The daddy. More extreme than Reign In Blood and Pleasure To Kill, more evil than Bathory, it’s got more riffs than anyone else and it is absolutely relentless and uncompromisingly violent. Could it very well be the best thrash album of all time? I’d say no but it is very close, it only loses by a nose. An undisputed classic.

[Anthile]

It’s Psychotic Waltz. Need I say more?

[Spacewalk]

12 Slays Of Christmas #12: Omen - Warning Of Danger

Concluding with an old favourite. If you can imagine a slower and heavier Savage Grace with soulful barbarian vocals you’d be bang on. Those vocals man, if you filled up a room full of metal singers you’d be able to pick his out no problem. Noone sounds like J.D. Kimball and Omen wouldn’t sound like Omen without him which was proven when he eventually left and they got in Coburn “Never Neverland” Pharr in.

[Spacewalk]

[Skull]

German neo-classical band Haggard deserve a shout out in this thread. I have always been a huge fan of melodic orchestral parts as I am the black metal riffs. To hear both combined so well in their songs is fantastic especially as they actually do have a full orchestra backing them rather than using keyboards like many other bands.

This song (like the album it is from) is about the life and persecution of Galileo Galilei.