Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - Tender Prey
Full of Cave & Bad Seeds' best songs (I don't feel like saying classics since I would have to name City Of Refuge for the sake of it being a classic), namely The Mercy Seat, Up Jumped The Devil, Mercy, Slowly Goes The Night and Sunday's Slave. The rest are very good too. More rock than on the latest releases.
9/10
^ - Breathless/There She Goes, My Beautiful World
Just felt like buying it (for the b-side Under This Moon), though I usually don't buy singles.
Carnival In Coal - Fear Not
Got it as used since I'm not likely to find it or just to bother to find it as new. Not as good as Collection Prestige, the same wackiness is there but the hooks, the catchiness and the things that make Collection awesome mostly aren't there. Haven't given it too many listens, so I might grow to like it more. The lyrics are funny, as usual.
7/10
Testament - The New Order
This album is so damn good. It's just so fucking metal and so heavy, so catchy and so damn good. I don't think there's a bad song on it, though A Day Of Reckoning and Nobody's Fault are less good than the rest. Nevertheless, the riffs, the tightness of it and Chuck Billy's vocals, bass that you can actually hear doing cool things. Metal history.
9 ½/10
Viikate - Noutajan Valssi
I'm not good at describing Viikate, but at least on this album they combine melodic hard rock and certain elements of old Finnish pop with great melancholy and it comes out something very good. The songs are pretty down-to-earth both in musicianship and lyrics, usually dealing with (the troubles of) life in the countryside.
They've taken to a more common rock sound as of late, which is bit of a shame, though the new stuff is good too.
9/10
Dark Tranquillity - Haven
Thought it was about time to buy it, and it's one of their best albums of course. Sometimes I'm totally tired of the keyboards on this album, especially in The Same and Fabric, sometimes I really like them. At least it's good that they still kept trying new things.
And of course some of their best stuff is on Haven, Not Built To Last, Ego Drama and At Loss For Words in particular.
8 ½/10
Still don't have the new Solefald. It's not like I ordered it three weeks ago or anything, expecting to have it on the release date. Better start buying online.