Shining - Neka morgondagen
Wait, this is what Shining sounds like? Groovy Sabbathy riffs and OOH grunting vocals and long bluesy guitar solos with merely some tremolo-picked black metal texture? I swear I’ve listened to this band before but maybe not. This was really good. I love how they take the black metal-y bits in the middle and bring back the doom this time with added menace by the last third. 8/10.
Burial - Abhorrence Within
These guys were a newer discovery for me from RYM, but a pretty big letdown. Very derivative of what Death had done up to this point, although I think this was one of the better songs. Maybe it’s just more tolerable one song at a time. 4/10.
Aftermath – Being
This is a band I’ve struggled with forever. I don’t like the vocalist at all and occasionally they just feel goofy, but I can’t deny some sweet Mental Vortex/Prongisms in those atmospheric sections. This song has both. 5/10.
The Lord Weird Slough Feg - 20th Century Wretch
Good Slough Feg, not much more. 6/10.
The Chasm - A Portal to Nowhere
I like the dissonant faster black metal parts around five minutes in, some harmony lines elsewhere that were nice but overall a good example of what I don’t like about the Chasm, too disjointed put together and many of the individual ingredients are still weak. 4/10.
Sadus - Throwing Away the Day
Kind of a silly exterior but I’m realizing that these riffs build off of each other in a way I hadn’t appreciated before, topsy-turvy stuff, great solo too. 7.5/10.
Torchure - Resort to Mortality
Eh, way too long, didn’t really build enough to justify its length, and the keyboard/spoken part was lame. The weepier kinda medieval sounding doomy riffs were cool though, I wish they went further with that. 4/10.
Moral Decay - This God
Along with Anacrusis’ Reason album, emo thrash at its best. Super passionate and raw vocals, ambitious songwriting but still able to bring hooks, a shame the band never went further. That melodic thrash break 4 minutes in is one of the greatest things I’ve ever heard in the genre. Maybe the neoclassical solo goes a little too far, otherwise just about perfect. 9.5/10.
Type O Negative – Anesthesia
The intro put me off but the rest was a pleasant nostalgia shot, not for the song itself but just the general angsty early 2000s goth vibes that were so inescapable on the forums I frequented back in those days. 7/10.
Merciless - Dying World
Love those lofty Conan-esque verses, one of the slower and maybe simpler songs on the album, kinda the album’s Black Prophecies, but done with style. 8/10.
Mourning Beloveth - Nothing Has a Centre
Started well enough but the death metal vocal parts hurt it and got too sappy by the end. 15 minutes was way too long. 4/10.
Good playlist, I had the lowest expectations for Shining and TON but ended up enjoying those some of the most.