Review: Amon Amarth – Twilight of the Thunder God

Twilight of the Thunder God

Twilight of the Thunder God is the ninth studio release by the swedish melodic Death Metal band Amon Amarth. To start off I’d like to say that I am a huge fan of everything these guys have recorded so far. The sheer force behind their stuff is so great that I hardly think they should really be labeled as Melodeath.

Although Amon Amarth have never really strayed much from their original sound and theme, they just do it so damn well that it never seems even the slightest bit stagnant or overdone. And this hasn’t changed with Twilight of the Thunder God. It’s all there, heavy-as-hell guitarwork, thundering drums, roaring death growls, and the ever-present norse lyrical themes. And as always, it works.

Guitarists Olavi Mikkonen and Johan Soderberg manage to keep it heavily crunching while remaining perfectly harmonized, making up the core of AA’s sound with consistently excellent riffs. Especially on
tracks like “Tattered Banners and Bloody Flags”, “The Hero” and “Varyags of Miklagaard” is their substantial contribution heard.

This album also displays the best drumming performance by Fredrik Andersson since Versus the World, providing blastbeats so dynamic and heavy that it’s hard to sit still while listening. The frenzied roaring
of vocalist Johan Hegg just sums everything up flawlessly, and provides some of the catchiest choruses imaginable. His vocal work is particularly awesome on tracks like “Where is your God” and “Free Will Sacrifice”.

The main difference on this album is the surprising guest appearances, something AA has pretty much never done before. Roope Latvala from Children of Bodom provides a guitar solo on the title track and Apocalyptica provide a short cello interlude on “Live for the Kill”. This throws in a little extra variety without seeming too
out-of-place, and it’s a cool addition.

All in all, this is another excellent death metal release by one of my very favorite bands of the genre, and I strongly recommend it. Not just for fans, but also for anyone even slightly interested in metal. Amon
Amarth are damn hard not to like and this is one of their very best albums so far. Twilight of the Thunder God is just plain great to listen to and one of the best releases of the year.

Song Picks: Tattered Banners and Bloody Flags – Where Is Your God? – Twilight of the Thunder God

9/10 Excellent

Alright, I’m taking a break from posting, been putting alot of stuff up lately. Plus I’m turning seventeen today and I have stuff to do. Na zdrovya!

Warr Guitar

Warr Guitar

This tank of a guitar has been around since the nineties but for some reason I’d never heard of it until now. 14 strings varying from bass to regular guitar gauge strings all on one thick neck? I need to try one of these!

More about it here

Zappanale

It’s funny. I thought i would’ve discovered this festival sooner, since im a BIG fan of Frank Zappa, but i first heard of it today and started researching it a little bit. As i read more and more i became very excited about this project, which has been around longer than i have lived.

Well it’s called Zappanale and it’s a festival which tributes Frank Zappa with bands coming from all over the world to play at the Zappa-site in Germany. All playing the Zappa music we love. The festival runs for three days, just enough time to cover Frank’s material.

This really sounds like something i will go see next year since it was held in August. And i also think some of the other suspects should go if youre in on it.

For the suspects and the danish crowd, here’s an article about the Zappanale http://www.dr.dk/P2/lyttilnyt/tema/frankzappa/zappanale.htm

Go Frank Zappa!

Drink review: Fat Man Running (And the recipe)

Hello everybody
I consumed alot of alcohol yesterday and decided to make a Fat Man Running as promised in the last post.

The Impression:
I got to much rum in the first drink so it tasted way much of rum, sadly
Altho i think i got the 2nd right, it had a good, pretty neutral taste with a twist of lime (Mmm… lime) and the ginger ale didn’t get drowned in some of the stronger tastes (like the rum)
But it tasted like some kinda soft drink thing -.-
Its a very colorful drink and a nice starter, since it aint that strong

The Recipe:
This is how i made it, there’s probably a better one out there.

What you need:
Curaqua ( can’t spell it properly, the q is actually a c with a dot beneath it)
Dark Rum
A lime
Ginger Ale

How to make it:

• Take the lime and make that sweet sweet bitter lime juice thing go down your glass, you need to fill 5% of the glass with this, which usually is like… half a lime… else you need to buy some proper drink containers.
• Now take the Curatqua thing and pour an amount equal to the lime juice already in the glass
• Now take your rum, drink a tad of it
• Now you want to fill 20% of the glass with rum (or i would want to do that)
• Then you fill up with ginger ale
• Now your fat man should be green with a twist of blue, and ready to run
• Now take a spoon ( i used a knife) and stir it (staring at it helps too)
• Enjoy! (until someone falls into you and you spill the whole drink on the cute girl you have been trying to charm the whole night)

The stars:(Stars are subject to change and will try/succeed to steal your soul within near future)
it is a good drink but tastes a bit too sugarish and sweet for me to really enjoy it i will give it:

Three stars!
(Because it was too sweet and tried to drown me, twice!)
And why do i have a headache? -.-
And another long post, can’t seem to make these things small, at all

Review: Metallica – Death Magnetic

Death Magnetic

This release is one of the most intensely discussed albums right now, both among various people I know and on the net. The mixed opinions seem to vary from utter disgust (often from older and ex-fans) to satisfied acknowledgement (often from newer, post-Master of Puppets fans). Having heard the entire album a few days ago, I can see that these arguments are not going to end anytime soon. I’m not particularly engaged in the argument regarding Metallica’s development over the last 12 years or so, So I’m just going to stick to reviewing the album instead of throwing in yet another opinion about the band.

Death Magnetic is the ninth studio release by the bay area metallers. As someone (I can’t remember who) commented, it sounds like the album that should have followed the Black Album back in 1991, and it would seem like Metallica may have been trying to recapture that era of their musical career somewhat.

Death Magnetic opens with “That was just your life”, which is definitely one of the best tracks on the album, strong riffs and energetic vocals reminding me of some of their earliest work. This solid opener is not, unfortunately, reflected very much in the rest of the album. The next few songs, “The End of the Line” and “Broken, Beaten and Scarred” are just plain boring, which is particularly due to the uninteresting drums and vocals (doesn’t Hetfield ever get tired of yelling ”-eah!!” in every line?). The single “The Day blah blah blah” follows this pattern aswell, and it is not until the fast and catchy ”All Nightmare Long” that anything really worth listening to is found on Death Magnetic. The rest of the album is fairly linear, the best of it cool and fast paced, the worst dull and uninventive.

To me, this album is driven completely by the guitarwork. There are some killer riffs and solos on here, but they fail to really take the album all that far. Don’t get me wrong, this is not a bad album, but it isn’t really good either. Metallica obviously tried hard, but can’t quite reach above mediocrity as a metal group. Damn, I just said my opinion about them as a band. Ah well. 

Songs Picks: That was Just your Life – All Nightmare Long – Suicide & Redemption

4/10 Lacking

Music and personality follow-up

Here’s a link to a BBC website which feats actual characteristics on each genre check it out.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/7598549.stm

I believe its the same survey as the other one.

Review: Scamp – Mirror Faced Mentality

Mirror Faced Mentality

Mirror Faced Mentality Is the first full-length album by the danish technical thrash metal band Scamp. I picked it up from record store the other day after having been to their live set last week.

This is an album that you need to hear a few times before you truly appreciate it. At first it reminded me a lot of technical metal bands like Meshuggah, and I was a little dissapointed that it didn’t sound more like what I had heard live the other night. My first impression didn’t last though, and after having listened to the entire album I can say this is one of the best new metal albums I’ve heard in months. 

Being thrash, the sound is comprised mainly of grinding, heavily distorted riffs and thundering, intense-as-hell drumming, which blend perfectly with each other without overpowering the rest of the music. Particularly the double pedal drumming is awesome, and is used incredibly well in songs like “Relief” and “Pressure Wave”. Lead vocalist Mikael Rise does a great job, using his roaring vocal style to add a lot of energy to the sound as well. Besides the obvious stuff, Scamp also use some unusual elements for metal, including mixing in some distorted, bass-like didgeridoo warble under the rest of the music on a few songs for a really cool effect, even though it sometimes makes it feel like they’re cramming too much into some parts.

All in all I’m very impressed with this debut album, and feel that Scamp has a great amount of potential on the scandinavian metal scene.

Song Picks: Perception  -  A Familiar Word  –  Pros and Cons  -  Relief

8/10

Upcoming Reviews

Starting tomorrow I will be posting a number of music reviews, usualy once a week or whenever. I buy/acquire a lot of music so I might as well use the blog to voice my opinion about some of it and make some recommendations. Reviews and stuff will probably mostly be about various metal-releases, but I will try and get some variation in as well. Tomorrow I’ll be posting my review of the new Mirror Faced Mentality album by the band Scamp.

Unbelievably awesome

Last night I went to see five metal bands perform live at the Present Aarhus Festival in heart of our home city. I’ve been to death metal shows roughly this size before, but this was unlike anything I have ever experienced. Ever. My friend and I managed to get way up to the stage, right in the center of the pit, and held our ground there for the entire set of shows, Pariah Syndicate, Oktan, Scamp, Exmortem and Hatesphere. 

I managed to get a few pictures to show here later, but for the most part I was completely absorbed in five hours of thrashing, drinking, headbanging, and roaring along with everyone else there. The bands were incredible, particularly Scamp (the lead vocalist, Mikael Rise, poured a gasoline-tank full of whisky on our heads) and Hatesphere (who had the entire pit thrashing insanely their entire set). We went there not knowing exactly what to expect, and staggered out of pure, metal awesome about five hours later.

All in all it was just f***ing amazing. Especially since this was on a goddamn thursday. Friday morning with three hours of sleep, several bruises and a hangover is kinda brutal, though.

(Sorry about long post and lack of pictures, I’ll post some another day.)

Illdisposed

Looks like Hannibal and I are going to go see Illdisposed live in october. Illdisposed are one my favorite Death Metal bands, and I’m psyched to be going! The gig is part of the band’s scandinavian tour and will be at Voxhall in Aarhus on the 11th of october. I urge any danish metalheads reading this to be there!

Illdisposed