Midnight - Lust, Filth and Sleaze 9/10
Been neglecting Midnight these days, this sleazy ripping riff-fest reminds me why this motherfucker is so popular. Shame that (IMO) he's never quite maintained that quality his debut demonstrated.
Demoncy - Commencement of Dark Crusades 7/10
Drums that sound like a kid at the beach banging on her plastic bucket aside; this is cool shit. I do dig Demoncy in general but I haven't listened to all that much.
Ancient Empire - The Tower 9/10
Everything I want out of modern power metal. It's epic, energetic, not too flashy but not trying to revive the old days with a purposely unpolished style or anything. Just great fucking metal.
Terrorizer - Corportation Pull-In 6.5/10
As a massive deathgrind/grindcore fan I find myself progressively meh-ing at this band. They rule obviously but I'm just so bored with them at this point, so this rating is biased in a negative direction unfortunately. Considering the fact that grindcore is majority-political you couldn't find a more obscure and interesting band to sing unintelligibly about corporate greed?
That Terrorizer song has been used before.
Lazies Leave The Hall.
Pantheist - Sloth 9/10
Corpse - Heaven Needs Money 7/10
Woah something new for my ears? This sounds like it was stored beneath some moldy floorboards for 30 years before being revealed to the masses. Sounds charmingly clumsy.
Realm - Root of Evil 9.5/10
God damn this shit is pushing everything into the red. Real(m) Men Play On 10 Thousand.
Hellhammer - Bloody Pussies 7.5/10
I love demo tapes but this one veers dangerously into the realms of the unsalvageable in many places, which sucks because I like this song and always felt disappointed that they never re-recorded it. It's basically Black Sabbath and UKHC/speed metal slammed together with zero finesse, but in a good way.
Rainbow - Stargazer 9.5/10
This one is a should/shouldn't win the game submission. Shouldn't because it's so God damn blatantly obvious and universally deified, but should because... well you know why. Rainbow perfected that hard rock/proto-metal swagger that boogie rock introduced into the DNA in the early days and when you add that epic vibe and Dio's vocals it just takes the music into the realm of sheer perfection. Hail Dio.
Deducted 0.5 for obviousness and just to give everything else a fair chance.
On-theme opinion: playlist was
WAY TOO SHORT. I needed more!