Psychotic Waltz - Another Prophet Song – a totally immersive cosmic journey, some of the most picturesque lyrics I’ve ever read in metal; 10/10
Slough Feg - Asteroid Belts – works maybe a little better in the context of the album but even at just two and a half minutes it easily gets the job done, epic but still rough-and-tumble USPM that totally fits a violent charge through an asteroid belt; 9/10
Legend - The Golden Bell – somber medieval ballad ahead of its time; 9/10
Aeternus - Warrior Of The Crescent Moon – this has more riffs than the entirety of their first album, which is to say more than three; the atmosphere is pretty decent here cheeseball keys and all, although I don’t really see this being an epic journey unless that line about the fall into a dark ravine counts; in that case, I think Sum 41’s In Too Deep would have been better suited; 5 – 3 = 2/10
The Crystal Eye - Sinister Realm – should have gone straight into the solo and faded after the second chorus, the hokey stop-start happy-doom thing only works in small doses, pleasant acoustic outro though; 4/10
Μillennium - The Traveller – never heard these guys, cool murky stuff; 7/10
Blitzkrieg – Vikings – maybe not quite a classic but close; 8/10
Runemagick - At Horizon's End – this is my first experience with this in-crowd favorite, surprisingly conservative tbh, hints of melodeath and the slower middle section has that Metallica-by-way-of-Dismember sentimentality, boring drumming, an infinite journey beyond time and space yet it follows a pretty basic form with little sense of climax, there wasn’t anything actually bad about this other than those inhaled vocals at the beginning but it didn’t really feel like it did anything; 4/10
Quicksand Dream - Road Goes Ever On – haven’t heard this album in a long time, don’t remember it being as upbeat and rocking as this song but then again this isn’t familiar at all anymore, still has a gorgeous wistful vibe, upvoting this because I think it may have turned me onto the band; 10/10
Garden Of Shadows - Twilight Odyssey – too sappy but pretty listenable despite being a lot of things I usually don’t like, female vocals near the end made me lol, like “Oh we GOT to have a climactic end for our album with female vocals” so they throw on three words as an afterthought; 5/10
Absu - Feis Mor Tir Na N'Og – Absu got better when they got thrashier, to the song’s credit it feels like more of a journey than most of the songs submitted musically, they definitely tried hard to establish that Celtic voyage vibe, but little of it is actually good, last minute and a half warranted an extra point; 5/10
Illuminati - Gulliver's Extraordinary Journey – forgot all about this album, for spazzy retro-Cynic tech-metal it’s quite good; 7/10
Book Of Reflections - Guardian of Time – never heard of these guys, doesn’t sound typical of neoclassical but hard to place how, in part I think it’s because those retro keys give me Hammer of Misfortune vibes even though the rest of the song doesn’t quite have that, and there’s also a little more urgency than the average Euro-power band, good stuff that I’ll bump up a little because it has me curious; 7.5/10
Unleash the Archers – Apex – sounds pretty damn good to me, better vocals than the majority of this playlist, polished production but doesn’t take away from things, despite their apparent beginnings there’s less melodeath here than in that Runemagick song, the riffs and melodies are too simple for this to be a great song but this is about as much as I could hope from the style; 7.5/10
Interesting playlist even if I didn't love everything.