So this is Christmas

So....Christmas. It's probably trendy to be all 'bah humbug' among bloggers at the moment but I freaking love it! The family get-togethers, the drink, the food, the good times; there's nothing better. Christmas was also the time of the year when my CD collection would bulge to near titanic proportions as every year, without fail, my hastily scrawled list to Santa would contain little more than albums. I'd always have to write a 'mum friendly' list as she'd never know which was the band and which was the album title, even then she'd just end up going into HMV or Virgin and just handing the list over to a helpful shop assistant. Ah, the good old days. Now, of course, what with the spread of music blogspots, a lot of the stuff I want I download, mainly because it's obscure and hard to find. I'm sure all of this is a God send to my poor mother.

All waffle aside, Christmas is a time to enjoy yourself, be with family and friends and in all ways spread love and joy to others in an all too easily cynical and bitter world. So here is my little attempt to bring the spirit of Crimbo into anyone's life who happens across my blog, enjoy...

We Wish You A Metal Xmas and A Headbanging New Year (2008)
Monster Ballads Xmas (2007)

The end of hope and dreams, fearless undead machines!

Deceased- Fearless Undead Machines (1997)

Abandoning the Best of the 2000s series of posts for a brief moment, here's a ripping album from way back in the 90s. The main reason I'm posting this, aside from it being a truly great death/thrash album, is my last post got me thinking about concept albums in metal. They seem to get such a bad press, constantly linked with notions of pomposity, self-indulgence and musical wankery, but that's rather unfair. Equally, concept albums =/= Prog, though progressive music does seem to lend itself very well to story telling and picture painting. Deceased's 'Fearless Undead Machines' album is based upon the Living Dead Trilogy specifically and zombie movies as a whole. It contains a few samples from the original Living Dead movie, most notably right at the start of the first track.
Though the band flirt with both Death and Thrash metal, it is predominantly the latter that we find here and the riffing is superb. In places it is reminiscant of Iron Maiden, if they were to play balls-to-the-wall thrash. There's more to this album than 'simply' break yer kneck riffage, however, there's melody, piano interludes (that surprisingly work) which all adds to the eerie, 60s B-movie horror effect of the album. It's a good deal that there's variety on the album as, clocking in at over an hour, it's quite a beast to be taken in at one sitting and the changes of pace and the odd shorter track help to break up hat might otherwise have become a bit of a monotony. This isn't to say that the music is ever in danger of becoming stale, but simply that a full hour of similar, albeit rather awesome, thrash metal might just start getting a bit dry.

I'm all too aware that I've started waffling more and more with my posts so I'll try to keep this one a little shorter. Last word on this album: If you like it then by the love of God, the Devil or Science (who am I to judge?) check out their other work, there isn't a crappy Deceased album, particularly Supernatural Addiction which I was originally going to include in the Best of the 2000s but decided upon the Concept album link.

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"When there is no more room in hell... the dead will walk the earth."

Summer dress slips down her arm

Porcupine Tree- Deadwing (2005)

Once more a release of the 21st century that truly roxxorz some boxxorz and it's another British band. Here we have a simply sublime and superb album full of brilliantly progressive rock, verging on the lighter scale of metal at times.
I read a lot about this band and, rather foolishly, was constantly put off by the name. For some reason it just didn't appeal to me in the slightest and I was reluctant to even try them out, despite the glowing reviews I'd heard. What a foolish mistake for this album (along with 'Fear Of A Blank Planet') are beautifully crafted, mature pieces of prog rock without the pomposity and bullshit that goes along with the genre. Sure, at times the lyrics are a little inane (the rhyming nonsense of opener Deadwing for example) but they then soar to the sublime in such tracks as Arriving Somewhere. The album lives up to to the 'prog' stereotype even further by being a concept album, apparently based upon a screenplay by the vocalist and guitarist, Steven Wilson. It's a ghost story, by all accounts.
So, a prog rock concept album about a ghost story by a group from Hertfordshire....I know I may not really be selling this to anyone in the least, but it's up there with my favourite albums ever. Musically it's just sublime, the guitar work ranges from lilting and haunting to straight up hard rocking riffage. The vocal melodies accompany they music perfectly and, as previously noted, some of the lyrics are almost tear enucingly brilliant. The whole of 'Arriving Somewhere' and 'Open Car' are songs that mske the hairs stand up on the back of your neck and arms; the kind of track you usually find one of on every 20th album you might listen to and here we are with 2 on the same album.
Really, to try to single out one or two tracks (as I appreciate I already have...) isn't fair to this album as it needs to be taken in as a whole, ideally listened to, and I mean really listened to, in one sitting. So, get it, listen to it, love it and pass on to all your friends, family and passing acquaintances who have even the vaguest of interests in music as a whole as it truly deserves more attention that it will ever receive.

WORSHIP

I'm standing on a ledge, push me over the edge

Wipers- Over The Edge (1983)

On one of my many visits to the Cosmic Hearse (an infinitely better and far more worthy blog than my own) I was confronted by this post.
I won't use such hyperbole as to say that the album posted changed my life but it was perhaps one of the best and most surprising albums I have downloaded without knowing anything of the band themselves.
The thing that really struck me about the album was the guitar work, it is simply superb. There's the angular and driving power chord riffage one would come to expect from any 'punk' album but there is melody, haunting, beautiful melody. This is no more perfectly exemplified than on the likes of Doom Town and the title track itself. The guitar work, the vocals and the lyrics all lend this album a sense of maturity, not in terms of simply being a tight nit group (which they undoubtedly are) but also of purpose and meaning; this is an album that deserves to be heard and deserves to be praised. This is no throw-away release from a band finding it's feet, this album is assured, direct, powerful.
Forget the fact that the Wipers influenced a swathe of grunge bands from Mudhoney to Nirvana and listen to the album on it's own merits. This album tells a story of a particular place in time and space, it is a document of life in Portland for this group of young men in the early 80s.

Nothing I have said in this post is worthy of this album, nothing I can say about the band or the music they produce can adequately convey how good this band were and their discography is.

So here is a shamelessly stolen link from Cosmic Hearse, if you download from here make sure to visit that blog and leaves comments there. It really is worth your time....

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From the ashes of the first stars our world is born

So another return.
I would spout the usual excuses about being really busy and not having the time but I'm simply lazy and generally find myself apathetic to everything.
At any rate, my laptop broke (and is still broken, with the W, D and 3 buttons refusing to work properly and one of the hinges on the screen completely knackered) and it's a pain in the arse to type for any prolonged period of time.
So here it comes, another half baked, half arsed return to my blog that seems to have only 1 fan, a very kind person who has left comments and the like.

Onwards....