GMD Poll: Top 10 Metal Albums of 1983

In-crowd people have a tendency to listen to opinions more than music, so it's not surprising when so many of them lack the attention span to sit through a 40-50 minute album and dismiss the second half. I've seen the same thing said about Nosferatu and Nespithe; it's just a way of saying "I desire maximum image with minimal effort when listening to music".
 
The Chasm is such a mess. I'd probably take Load over any of their albums that I'm familiar with. Certainly the Black album.

The Chasm are considered to be riff-masters by many, so the fact you think they can't write a riff invalidates your opinion on them. Also, even ANUS, who dislike The Chasm, recognise their compositional prowess.

With Fear... is definitely front-loaded and the album peaks right in the middle with Primal Breath, but I think the drop off in quality is massively overstated. The Architects completely rules and 2:27 - 3:05 of Stardrowned is one of my favourite moments on the whole album.

The drop in quality is perhaps overstated, but the fact is that those songs are very different to the 4 I mentioned. It's like two completely different recordings. Those 4 are full of these grand melodies and have emotional impact. The ones that follow are more thrashy and aggressive. The production totally doesn't fit a death/thrash style.
 
With Fear... is just a really frustrating album to me, due to the way it drops off. The first song is decent death/thrash (but I still usually skip it), the next 4 are amazing with The Break of Autumn and Primal Breath being genre highlights, and then I rapidly lose interest.

i like the second half to varying degrees, but i'd take that four song stretch over all the albums you mention and have listened to it endlessly. easy enough to just treat it as an EP if it bothers you that much.

In-crowd people have a tendency to listen to opinions more than music, so it's not surprising when so many of them lack the attention span to sit through a 40-50 minute album and dismiss the second half. I've seen the same thing said about Nosferatu and Nespithe; it's just a way of saying "I desire maximum image with minimal effort when listening to music".

the in-crowd tends to prefer the second half of FAR AWAY FROM THE SUN, THE SPECTRE WITHIN, SAD WINGS etc which doesn't fit with your retarded theory. not to mention that anyone who can't hear a difference between the two halves of stuff like WFIKTBD or NOSFERATU/A DISTANT THUNDER has too many dicks in their ears.
 
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Sacramentum is a meaningless band so I don't pay attention to opinions on them. Regardless, the RYM track averages would seem to dispute your point, the first song has the highest average and there's not much of an obvious trend after that. I've never heard of a particular bias towards a side on The Spectre Within (The Apparition is obviously considered one of their best, but Kyrie Eleison is usually considered the weakest on the album). Sad Wings is a short album so presumably even in-crowd people can sit through that one.

The Chasm are considered to be riff-masters by many, so the fact you think they can't write a riff invalidates your opinion on them. Also, even ANUS, who dislike The Chasm, recognise their compositional prowess.

Is this the same ANUS that extols the intricate classical composition of Final Holocaust? Opinion invalidated.
 
Well RYM doesn't represent the opinions of the in-crowd does it. Fog's Kiss (the first track) had a music video made for it and is therefore their most well known song, which is probably why it has the highest rating. Many also love its outro. 5, 6 and 7 are generally the most highly regarded on FaftS, though. Personally I rate the title track higher than track 5 these days.

Re: Final Holocaust. Well Anus love that band so obviously they're going to talk highly about them. It speaks more when they have positive things to say about a band that they don't like. That rarely happens.
 
i did song survivors for all these albums back in the day which would back up what i said i think. oh hey, sacramentum are a good example of a band that requires plenty of attention to soak up and would go over the head of peons who only care about riffs and listen to every album once before recording their opinion in notepad to be posted years later as though it were fact!
 
1. Mayhem – De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas
2. Mayhem – Grand Declaration of War
3. Mortuary Drape – Tolling 13 Knell
4. Tormentor – Anno Domini
5. Sarcofago – I.N.R.I.
6. Dornenreich – Flammentriebe
7. Mefisto – The Truth (demo comp in case it doesn't count)
8. Venom – At War With Satan
9. Burzum – Burzum
10. Mortuary Drape – All the Witches Dance
11. Bewitched – Dragonflight
12. Immortal - Diabolical Fullmoon Mysticism
13. Master’s Hammer – Ritual
14. Necromantia – Scarlet Evil Witching Black
15. Darkthrone – Under a Funeral Moon
16. Sacramentum – Far Away from the Sun
17. Darkthrone – A Blaze in the Northern Sky

#9Jan 23, 2015

FaftS was featured on HBB's list from the 2015 best black metal albums poll. Now they're apparently worthless. A rather in-crowd list as well, except having Diabolical Fullmoon Mysticism over Pure Holocasut and including Grand Declaration of War.
 
I don't hate Sacramentum, some of their riffs are pretty and the album is inoffensive at worst, but not the kind of stuff I want to waste my precious time on. Kind of like trying really hard to get into a post-PTK Kreator album when I could be relistening to a classic Exodus album instead. And in any case, I don't pretend to be an avid fan of them, unlike the worthless taste-projecting fucks that cite Nosferatu as a favorite yet pretend the B-side is notably weaker than the first.
 
it's hard not to get that feeling when the first three songs on the b-side are a) the weakest on the album and b) rather divorced conceptually from what preceded them. it ends real strong though. kinda follows the same pattern as its predecessor where tracks 6/7 are the weakest but then it goes out with a bang, ignoring the cover.
 
I still have no idea what makes people think Baptized in Blood is any less an ordinary thrash-y song than Swirling Madness. My track ranking goes...

B4/B5
A6
A5
B1
B2
A3
A4
B3
A1/A2

Which is about as evenly matched as it can get. If there's a trend, it's more that each side ends stronger than it begins. It's an extremely consistent album both in quality and style, which is why people with ADHD tend to lose focus.
 
This made me realize that A Distant Thunder follows a similar trend, weaker opening tracks with super strong closing ones (unless you let the Scorpions cover ruin things). I'll admit that Abandon Ship is in its own league compared to the rest of the album, though.

A3
A4
B3
B4
B1
A2
B2
A1
 
I still have no idea what makes people think Baptized in Blood is any less an ordinary thrash-y song than Swirling Madness.

i have no idea what makes you think this either, tis more tense and expressive and focused. 'swirling madness' is fine tho, not trying to say it's shit or something

hey, 'winds of war' is probably my favourite on the other one.

I don't even know what the fuck is going on in this argument. Autismoboy is listing off a bunch of letters and numbers and talking about how people with ADHD can't listen to an album over 30 minutes long.

no, you nailed it, that's exactly what's going on
 
I've never seen any cogent justification for the claim that the songs on the second half are any weaker on average than those from the first half outside of lyrics. It's like people think "Oh, a half-concept album from 1989 from a band considered to be a pioneer in early power and neoclassical metal, that was somewhat ahead of its time, but obviously not being a full concept album deducts innovation points, therefore I can repurpose my personal experience of ADHD-borne boredom into a facade of objective judgment with ease, how convenient". I mean, these people can't be bothered to talk about weak B-sides on more than just the same few albums over and over, so it's not like it's a universal position of boredom. Instead, it's a form of virtue signalling that is very easy for the in-crowd to latch onto. People like that love to take objective statements describing art and fashion it into an opinion. It's similar to people that by and large hate anime go on and on about how amazing Neon Genesis Evangelion and/or Miyazaki films are because their creators openly brag about subverting tropes and/or hating the usual anime crowds, which provides a convenient springboard for any professional consumer to jump from.

I mean, what, do these lyrics really make the song for you?

And every night
You'll feel my bite
You won't be scarred
So be prepared
To feel the pain
Your life I drain
And then we'll be
Baptized in blood
I am the prince of darkness
Bow before me
Fall, succumb to my trance
And be mine for eternity
Time, centuries have come and gone
But still I remain
Black, yes, I am the dark
That puts the light to shame


Like, they're not *terrible* but they're certainly not any kind of good. They're actually more embarrassing than I thought, and make me grateful for my inability to comprehend human speech in real-time. If that was the only song about vampirism, no one would give a shit about the lyrics. So the lyrics have little to nothing to do with why people pretend the first half is that much better, it's just a convenient excuse to talk about music for the sake of talking.
 
So his "early years with metal" consist of masterpieces of the genre and yours consist of what? Ares kingdom, At the Gates and The Chasm? :lol: nothing from any of those bands comes close to touching the first four Metallica albums, regardless of what you "edgelord" circle jerkers around here want to spew out.

Dream Theater, Death, Iron Maiden, Iced Earth, Megadeth, etc. actually.
 
i don't care about the lyrics particularly, it just implies laziness and lost focus that they abandoned the concept halfway through is all - i doubt i'd ever comment on it if it wasn't reflected in a decline in quality from 4-4.5 level to 3-3.5 level over those three songs. 'baptized in blood' is one of my favourite thrash/speed/whatever songs - it's close to some kind of helstar ideal for me - which should help demonstrate that this boils down to us wanting different things out of music and nothing else, despite your increasingly paranoid theorising. i get chills as soon as the intro segues into it and they don't let up for basically the whole song.

i've never watched NGE but miyazaki's movies ARE animé for non-animé fans, no? no matter how derivatively his fans end up expressing this preference, it's not 'virtue signalling' if it genuinely reflects their response to the work, and in most cases it probably does. i mean, it doesn't take hearing brags from the creators to see ghibli are going for a more western-friendly brand of respectability and elegance than most animé and go easy on the more alienatingly japanese elements. many of the normie westerners who like miyazaki would be totally baffled and annoyed by a lot of stuff h/c animé fans like. it's more than likely that these people are just, y'know, more normal/boring than a unique snowflake like yourself.