Sadistic Metal Reviews: Rape of Your Faves

George Psalmanazar submitted a few reviews of albums he vehemently despises to Death Metal Underground. Enjoy!

Angel Witch – Angel Witch (1980)

Angel Witch followed the path of so many other metal bands: excellent demos lead to a spotty album with some great highlights that didn’t sell particularly well and the band broke up. Angel Witch at their best combined heavy metal riffs and a 70s hard rock rhythm section with sweep picked guitar virtuosity in energetic songs. Unfortunately Angel Witch‘s slick production aimed for commerciality and inserted tons of vocal-driven hard rock songs for a potential arena rock audience that never materialized amongst the earlier, excellent material that appeared on demos and singles. These rock songs make Diamond Head‘s “Sucking My Love” and Witchfinder General‘s “No Stayer” seem like profound works of Schopenhaurean genius. Angel Witch’s vocal-driven lite rock blunders are more Peter Frampton than Black Sabbath. The only worthwhile new composition was the excellent speed metal “Angel of Death” that was heavily influential to Metallica. Overall Angel Witch just isn’t a very worthwhile album unless you buy the 2x CD reissue with the demos, singles, and live bonus tracks. The rare Sinister History anthology is a better release containing the entire 1978 demo and even more live tracks. Angel Witch, like so many New Wave of British Heavy Metal albums, simply has too many failed overtures to a radio pop rock audience to function as an entire work.

Judas Priest – British Steel (1980)
After culminating their heavy metal career with Stained Class and the excellent Unleashed in the East live album, Judas Priest still were not wealthy rock stars playing stadiums after dressing up like homosexual bondage slaves on the semi-sell-out, half pop rock album, Killing Machine / Hellbent for Leather, which still had a few great songs like “Running Wild“. Another opportunity arose when cable television was slowly becoming more popular and MTV became something to have on in the background. For music videos, a catchy three to five second jingle embeds best deep in the brains of idiots. On British Steel, Judas Priest condensed themselves all of their rock and metal influences into radio pop; Led Zeppelin, The Doobie Brothers, Motorhead, and The Scorpions became background music for commercials and commuting. “Breaking the Law” riffs more new wave than heavy metal. The lyrics accordingly changed from heavy metal virtus to Wonder Bread Bruce Springsteen anthems. British Steel paved the way for MTV to breakdown what the shills claimed to be music into three to five second rhythmic synthesized drum beats with rap later in the decade. The best thing to come out of British Steel was a punchline to Beavis & Butt-head sketches:

Manilla Road – The Deluge (1986)
Generic speed metal with vocals performed by a someone on beta blockers at a bar & grill karaoke night. All of the riffs and leads are generic heavy metal ones used to create the type of lame fantasy world that would be present in mediocre paperbacks such as Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time series. This is when Manilla Road feel like playing heavy metal; interspersed throughout the album are songs with glam metal power ballad parts of the type played by commercialized speed metal acts Metal Church and Testament. These are there solely to appeal who watched Led Zeppelin’s awful The Song Remains the Same film high, found it mind-blowing, and developed an interest in historical fencing. Otherwise influences from Black Sabbath, Celtic Frost, Judas Priest, and Metallica are used to construct rocking sing-alongs for teenagers’ Advanced Dungeons & Dragons games. Many riffs and vocal melodies are recycled from the prior album Crystal Logic. The Deluge is a record for overweight, fedora-wearing renaissance fairy neckbeards wearing leather corsets over Seinfeld pirate shirts to drink mead to while watching drunk Rip Torn fall over himself in Beastmaster.

Dissection – Storm of the Light’s Bane (1995)
On The Somberlain, Dissection successfully shoehorned riffing reminiscent of Emperor‘s lead work into Iron Maiden style songs. Storm of the Light’s Bane was Dissection Nuclear Blasted into outer space for a more mainstream audience just as Wolverine Blues, Domination, Necroticism: Descanting the Insalubrious, and Massive Killing Capacity were. After a brief intro, “Night’s Blood” surges forth and despite the unnecessary bridge is the peak of the album with its New Wave of British Heavy Metal guitar harmonies. Yes, all of the songs on Storm of the Light’s Bane are verse-chorus-verse rock formations. Storm of the Light’s Bane then falls on its smug, sell-out face. Bouncy rhythms in the riffs are tailored for jumping up and down and moshing and sappy over-emotional leads perfect for those hopped on the black metal bandwagon from Guns N’ Roses’ Use Your Illusion to play air guitar to. The riffing was again bowdlerized Emperor with David Parland‘s on Necrophobic‘s The Nocturnal Silence being a new influence. Dissection even added in a power ballad for anyone in a battle jacket who wanted to show Steve Perry their lighter. Lyrical themes revolving around The Temple of the Black Light cult provided an unthreatening, non-denominational evil for the funderground to adopt despite a few mentally unstable persons sacrificing stray cats and homosexuals. Ridiculous anti-cosmic gods don’t put yuppies off as much as imagining the Pope on the end of a rope or wanting to send the world back to the Dark Ages you know. The funderground and bar crowd worships Storm of the Light’s Bane as it was targeted toward them: Dissection were a wannabe Queensryche closer to Opeth and Pantera than they were to Alf Svensson’s At the Gates.

Amon Amarth – Once Sent from the Golden Hall (1998)

Amon Amarth take inspiration from Kreator and post-Alf Svensson At the Gates – Slaughter of the Soul to become the arena rock version of Gothenburg metal. At the Gates broke up after Slaughter of the Soul and In Flames songs had those nu-“metal”-like awful harsh-clean verse-chorus dichotomies that can cut a drunk German in a power metal shirt’s party time short faster than heat stroke. Amon Amarth fixed this with standard, verse-chorus-verse rocking singalongs to provide a safe-space version of Viking beer hall metal as of course Unleashed‘s fusion of actual death metal and NWOBHM gallops was way too musically threatening. Listening to Once Sent from the Golden Hall is like watching a bowdlerized Saturday morning cartoon version of a 1980s action movie. Amon Amarth is GI Joe core.

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39 thoughts on “Sadistic Metal Reviews: Rape of Your Faves”

  1. fenrir says:

    Spot on about Dissection. Never understood what the big deal was with that bland style, mediocre textures, and radio rock structures.

    1. Rainer Weikusat says:

      The first album isn’t much better: Black metal cliches which always fall short of becoming more than “pleasant background noise” randomly pierced together with similarly wanting heavy metal cliches.

      1. David Rosales says:

        I agree. I think the first two Dissections are relevant in that they are influential, but they’re not very good. The rest of Dissection’s work is simply embarrassing.

    2. GGALLIN1776 says:

      Only faggots say spot on.

      1. LostInTheANUS says:

        That observation is spot on, my man

        1. Found in the Esophagus says:

          Only faggots say “my man”, my man.

          1. This site is Grindr before Grindr

            1. Kvädare says:

              Grindr: Free aids
              Deathmetal.org: Sodomy for the victor (and aids)

              1. LostInTheANUS says:

                I bet Chuck “Suck My Cock” Schuldiner got AIDS from an ANUSite.

                1. Spread your ass and worship Satan says:

                  There`s a little AIDS in all of us.

                  1. canadaspaceman says:

                    Team America-EVERYONE HAS AIDS!
                    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yC7HwPh6Es

  2. wee-nis says:

    Dissection is weak. Who allowed this mediocrity to rise? Boring!

  3. nigstomper88 says:

    Manilla Road >>>>>>>>>>>> Massacra and Ildjarn, deal with it nerds

    1. ay lmao says:

      Manilla Road is just Asia without the synth. Bald spot waxing music.

      1. Anthony says:

        Yeah and Ildjarn is just some bald vegetarian autistic hitting two chords over and over.

  4. Anthony says:

    So this is a faggot site now? Good to know

  5. Marc Defranco says:

    Hey man wheel of time is some good stuff you fat fucking nerd

  6. GGALLIN1776 says:

    I’ve never listened to manilla road because of the stupid name, all i can think of is a manilla folder (or those shitty nilla wafers that cut the roof of your mouth) & that sounds like a dillinger escape plan cover band. Awful.

  7. sperm assault says:

    I love coming to this poser site for a good laugh. Keep ridiculing yourselves for my entertainment, bitches. I’m off to blast The Deluge loud as fuck now.

  8. Urvas Bethud says:

    This site is american, isn’t it? Most of the contributors are americans too, I guess.

  9. Nuclear Whore says:

    I liked that Dissection record, it was something new for my ears when they released it. Romantic Its problem was that it showed how tredy was the Swedish scene because it was a huge influence, a bad influence like At The Gates in their Slaughter record, but at least the latter did not have blood in their hands!

    1. Spread your ass an worship Satan says:

      ATG has a cock in their hands instead.

  10. canadaspaceman says:

    The reviews that keep popping up here, ripping on clasic metal for having some rock rhythms is frustrating.
    Next thing you know, I bet you will say is Black Sabbath was never metal and just hard rock too?

    Only half of the songs on the Angel Witch (1980) Lp are amazing. Yes, the bonus tracks make it a better purchase.
    I am not a fan of Dissection, but I still think their first 2 albums were cool.
    Amon Amarth – Once Sent from the Golden Hall (1998) – I found similar in spirit to Bal Sagoth. One of those type of bands that are nothing special, though decent musicians/songwriters, and if you are in the proper mood, you immensely enjoy their albums.
    Golden Hall was mentioned / reviewed a lot after its release and I doubt it was due to “hype”. Maybe due more to timing ?
    The late 1990s sucked, as radio / tv / magazines promoted only shit, so anything truly metal was embraced.
    Manilla Road – I still have to check them out some more, as I only remember the debut LP Invasion being cheezy 1970s hard rock/metal similar to Ted Nugent or Blue Oyster Cult.

    1. Better safe than sorry says:

      Merciless utilized rhythms that would later be copied by all those shitty black n`roll bands, perhaps we should shit on them too.

  11. Kvädare says:

    Breaking The Law is still a pretty good tune.
    The rest of the album is too rocky and not enough metal.

  12. Night Booger says:

    I don’t like any of these albums, I probably should like that Manilla Road one but it blends too much with the album before it and I get them confused. I like their retarded shit first three releases, the first half of “METAL” is the true Viking savage rock that baby oiled puffins like Orc Master or Amon Amarth or whatever they’re called want to be, when the hot tubs are at full steam wetting the thin fabric of undergarments to reveals treasures of the north. The heft and weight of the ripe husks are groped expertly in eager hands.

    I am completely agreeing with the case against Dissection, I’ve always found them murderously boring in a “hey it’s not terrible” way. It’s a dull throbbing boredom, like phantom cocks perverting your rectal form from the mirror side of their own dimension giving only residual vibrations of unsatisfactory promises of something more grand and penetrating.

    1. Syphilis says:

      Speaking of savage pillaging.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTQH-PBbBSg

  13. J. Munsinger says:

    there´s always people who hate Number Of The Beast, Dark Side Of The Moon, Symphonies Of Sickness, or who say classic Burzum is boring, badly played, with ridiculously childish crybaby vocals, or who say old Darkthrone or De Mysteriis Dom. Sathanas is incredibly bad shit. who say Deathspell Omega is random disharmony with no real structure. luckily we know these people just flashed their “I have no fucking clue” ID. same with those who don´t understand Storm Of The Light´s Bane. some things – sadly, for the critics who say otherwise – luckily stand above criticism, because the objective value is lightyears above any “but I know better, look how special I am” attention whoring.

    1. Deathspell Omega is atonal shit tekdeaf. Number of the Beast is mostly lame rock ‘n’ roll singalongs. What the fuck are you smoking? Are you cum drunk on HIV infested semen?

      1. Ryan Ebinger says:

        ^Shut your whore mouth, poser

          1. Ryan Ebinger says:

            suck me faggot

          2. Syphilis says:

            The Eternal Bretth strikes again.

            DSOTM and DSO are pretty AIDS-y nevertheless.

      2. 1349 says:

        He’s probably trolling.

    2. Rainer Weikusat says:

      there´s always people who hate […] Dark Side Of The Moon

      There’ll always be people who consider Syd Barret a fairly poor, blues-influenced guitar player who took way more LSD than was really good for him and who don’t think the bunch of non-desirables who used him to secure a record contract and then kicked him under a bus using the pretext of »non-professional behaviour« (as if they hadn’t known him before) at the earliest, possible opportunity because the stuff he came up with was a tad bit too uncanny[*] to ever ‘make it’ commercially didn’t contribute anything of value to the cultural development of mankind.

      But this means nothing for the few actually good records on your strange list (eg, Under A Funeral Moon).

      [*] I was planning to link to the recorded version of “Scream Thy Last Scream” here, however “Pink Floyd blocked that on copyright grounds”. Wankers.

      1. Rainer Weikusat says:

        Double negation in here. Was supposed to be “who don’t think the … contributed anything …”.

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