Cathedral - Ashes You Leave
Intro sounds ripped off from Falling off the Edge of the World or some other Dio-era Sabbath song or something. This is still alright, a thousand times better than the horrible stoner rock on the next album, but Cathedral beyond Forest of Equilibrium still doesn’t do much for me. Actually, some of the stuff towards last third was pretty nice, I guess I like aggressive Cathedral a lot more than lackadaisical Cathedral. 6/10.
Limelight - Ashes to Ashes
Never heard these guys, nice melodic stuff. 7/10.
Megadeth - Ashes in Your Mouth
This is a pretty decent song that shows he still had some great riffs left in him, but at the same time it also tends to sound like a vastly inferior rewrite of Holy Wars. Takes about 2 minutes for the song to really get good, although it does feel overlong. 7/10.
God Macabre - Ashes Of Mourning Life
Like all the other retro-OSSDM I’ve heard, very nice and vintage production, boring song. Oh wait, this is 1993? Lol, for some reason the cover art looked a little too clean and the sound a little too powerful to be vintage. Doesn’t change my rating. 4/10.
In This Moment – Ashes
Lol, yeah this sounds like MySpace metal. Listenable tbh though, female vocals work surprisingly well, makes me a tad nostalgic even though I didn't even listen to this kind of shit back then. 5/10.
Revelation – Ashes
Wow this was generic. Riffs repeat themselves forever, arrangement is uninspired, singer is a poor Ozzy knock-off. The faster portion of the solo was the only saving grace. 3/10.
Ulysses Siren - Above the Ashes
This is pretty much a top 10 thrash album for me, a massive shame they wrote so little. A perfect fusion of choppy buzzsaw thrash aggression, boisterous USPM melody, and technical musicianship. I get chills every time just hearing the intro to this song. 10/10.
Exiled Force - Axiz to Ashes
Nice contrast to show the difference between 80s thrash songwriting and 2000s thrash song writing. 3/10.
Suicidal Winds - Ashes From a Past Life
Getting those blackened surf rock vibes already, liking this. Aw, only the intro/outro. Not bad for black/thrash though, good performance even though the riffing is pretty generic. 6/10.
Dark Millennium - Of Sceptre Their Ashes May Be
One of the better songs on the album, although definitely still a step down from the first one. Still some weird songwriting for what is basically doom metal. 7/10.
Symphony X - Out Of The Ashes
That twinkly Warcraft 2 intro made me laugh. I don’t like very much Symphony X outside of Paradise Lost, but this song was nice, short but still managed to showcase the speed metal, Euro power style, and groovy prog metal sounds of the band all in one sub-4 minute jam. 7/10.