Blog Archives
Mik’s Top 100 Favourite Albums of All Time #86-90
A while ago, at the same time as Matt and Reggie, I posted my Top 100 All Time Favourite (Metal) Albums over at the forum The History of Metal on FB. It took a good amount of time and effort to put it together, but it was so much fun! My taste in metal is always changing, so the list will not always look the same. In fact, it’s already a bit different than it was when I first put it together and posted it on the forum seven months ago.
Album Review: Awaken – Awaken
Awaken – Awaken
Release Date: 1 Mar 2013
Songs: 10
Length: 57 minutes
Style: Hard Rock/Progressive
Career: Awaken is Awaken’s debut album. They are from Tennessee and are signed to Mausoleum Records
Similarities with: Dream Theater, Queensryche, Rush, Fates Warning, Iron Maiden
Album Review: The Room Colored Charlatan – Between Mirrors: The Quantum Immortality
The Room Colored Charlatan is certainly a strange band name that you don’t easily forget. I don’t have an explanation as to why they choose that name, but I know they make great music. They just released a single titled ‘Nexus Point’ with Daniel Tompkins (Skyharbor, ex-TesseracT) as guest vocalist. This caught my attention, of course, since Daniel is one of the best singers out there. I wasn’t disappointed. It’s melodic and heavy, but the clean vocals in the chorus make the song a lot more varied and adds depth to it which is something I’d like to hear a little more of from this band.
Listen to their new single here:
Tales From Bandcamp: Individuation by Latitudes
Combining elements of sludge, black, post, and prog metal, Latitudes have been able to craft a very unique sound that is laced in tons of atmosphere and texture. Their 2nd album Individuation shows the band growing their sound as well as their songcraft ability as each of the 8 track on the record are able to meander throughout different areas of their crushing beauty while not losing their way, nor my attention. Soft and ghost-like vocals paired with viscous sludge metal riffing, dreamlike ambient sections, and frequent black metal atmospheres create a floating in space while watching the glorious explosion of nebulae feeling. If you fancy bands like Pelican, Isis, prog era-Mastodon, Pink Floyd, or Agalloch give this band and album a shot, it’s some great music. Enjoy!!! Peace Love and Metal!!
Album Review – Theocracy – As the World Bleeds
As a youth I grew up in a Catholic household and attended Catholic school. During that time many things in the form of something ‘hip’ that the kids would enjoy and connect with were thrust upon me and my peers. Many of these ‘hip’ things came in the form of books, video games, and music. For the most part they were just mediocre rip offs of what was cool at the time, and that time being the early 90′s you can just imagine how horrible some of this stuff was. The music was what was used the most by my parents and teachers to ‘save’ me since it was well known I was a huge fan of it, especially heavy metal. But none of the music that they gave held the passion for the music like my favorites at the time, they all just sounded watered down, self-serving, and felt more concerned with converting people or just repeating ad nauseam ‘Jesus Saves’ instead of educating about religion and faith or telling cool stories from the Bible or recounting positive life lessons. Even at a young age I saw through all the b.s. and grew to immediately label anything faith-based as lame(I do have to say there were a couple of bands that were decent, and Stryper is way under-rated). Enter Theocracy and their album As the World Bleeds. If more bands in the Faith Metal/Music genre had their passion and approach, maybe I would have thought a bit differently in my early years, because what I really wanted then is what I want today. Great music, no matter the ideals behind it.
