Darkthrone - Where Cold Winds Blow 10/10
I worship
A Blaze in the Northern Sky, and while this isn't one of my absolute favourites from it, I'm still giving it a 10. Amazing production, filthy and terrifying atmosphere and one of the best black metal vocal performances ever.
Sort Vokter - Bak To Lysende Øyne 7.5/10
I love this fuzzy guitar tone, the absolutely hate-filled vocals and those random piercing shrieks. This has convinced me that it is time to revisit
Folkloric Necro Metal as it has been years.
Branikald - Rdyandalir 7.5/10
There are lots of subtle changes throughout this song which I enjoy. I could see me rating this higher if I was in the mood for this sort of thing, but I'm not right now. It's still good though and some people have clearly missed the point.
Scald - Night Sky 9.5/10
Epic doom! Astonishingly beautiful and emotional music right here. The vocals of this band took me some time to get used to because while at times they are just amazing, his lower register sounds really strange. This needs another reissue because it's still a pain to find on CD.
Bloodbath - Outnumbering the Day 5/10
I actually enjoy
Breeding Death quite a bit from this band, but I've found everything that came after to be meh. So yeah, I don't hate this, but it's not the sort of death metal that I look for. It's also sandwiched between 2 of the best songs on this list which does it no favours.
Panphage - Storm 9/10
Glad to see this here (
@Slayed Necros's choice?), I've been a big fan of this song for a while. Awesome little intro before it explodes into these glorious and triumphant melodies. Fantastic song. Unfortunately, the only other song I've heard from
Storm was nowhere near as memorable or interesting as this.
Hate Forest - Black Forest 7/10
A pummeling, violent, blast beat-ridden affair that evokes nature successfully. Those growls in the second half are fucking savage.
Alchemist - Part 1: The Bio Approach 5/10
I actually found the first 2 minutes of this to be pretty interesting. However, the vocals are terrible and some of the heavy riffs are annoying so I can't rate it any higher.
Ancestors - Mother Animal 5/10
I'm not big into stoner doom but this is absolutely crushing and bleak. It's far too long though and I couldn't see myself sitting through a whole album of this. It gets more interesting towards the end, and like Branikald, I might like this more if I were in a different mood.
Sacramentum - When Night Surrounds Me 10/10
A top 3 album of all time for me, absolutely majestic and beautiful. It's shocking that as amazing as this song is, there are 4/5 songs on this album that I think are even better. Dark, haunting and transcendental.
Atheist - Green 5.5/10
Oh my, this is disjointed and I don't like the stop-start riffing. The lead work is the best thing about this song. I'm a big fan of the first 2 Atheist records but I can't really get behind this at all. Whoever submitted this should have chose "Mother Man" instead because it's far superior.
Dead Can Dance - The Arcane 8.5/10
I'm a big fan of Brendan's vocals, I find them extremely soothing. This is dark and moving music that I enjoy a lot.
Arcturus - Icebound Streams and Vapours Gray 6.5/10
I've only heard songs from the first full length before I think, so this is new to me. I'm not sure if I like it or not, and I'm not feeling its attempts to be dramatic, but it is fairly interesting and unique, so extra points for that.
Drudkh - Forests in Fire and Gold 7.5/10
I've actually only heard
Autumn Aurora before, so another new track for me. It's lush and perfectly fitting for this theme and I enjoy it more as it continues to develop. I'm not big on the production though, if the guitars were lower in the mix then I think the atmosphere would wash over me more and I might rate it higher.
Waldgeflüster - Herbst befiel das Land 5/10
This begins well enough but then it starts to become a bit dull. The vocals are serviceable and the riffs are okay, but as others have said, it doesn't really make me feel anything and there's no need for it to be almost 8 minutes long.
Demolition Hammer - Cataclysm 7.5/10
Some thrash that I can actually get behind. Nice and brutal riffing. Fun and energetic song that is perhaps just a bit too long.
Phew! Lots of listening there! I've been doing this for so long that this thread has moved on another page now that I've finished. I kept taking breaks and coming back to it. I think the quality overall was the highest so far in this playlist for me, but still had a lot of stuff that I found meh or just okay. Thankfully there was nothing as offensive as Alestorm this time, so that's a blessing.
@CASSETTEISGOD nice to see you back, where have you been? Nocternity should have totally won the dragon round in my opinion.
@Carpe Mortem You're killing me by rating Darkthrone a 2 and Sacramentum a 5
.
