Warthur

MMA Metal Reviewer · Metal Reviewer
Registered more than 2 years ago · Last visit 5 days ago

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1918 reviews/ratings
BLACK SABBATH - Black Sabbath Heavy Metal | review permalink
BLACK SABBATH - Paranoid Heavy Metal | review permalink
THE STOOGES - Fun House Proto-Metal | review permalink
THE STOOGES - Raw Power Proto-Metal | review permalink
BLUE ÖYSTER CULT - Secret Treaties Hard Rock | review permalink
KISS - Alive! Hard Rock | review permalink
JUDAS PRIEST - Sad Wings Of Destiny Heavy Metal | review permalink
RUSH - A Farewell to Kings Hard Rock | review permalink
RUSH - Permanent Waves Hard Rock | review permalink
MOTÖRHEAD - Ace of Spades Heavy Metal | review permalink
RUSH - Moving Pictures Hard Rock | review permalink
IRON MAIDEN - The Number Of The Beast NWoBHM | review permalink
MERCYFUL FATE - Don't Break the Oath Heavy Metal | review permalink
METALLICA - Ride the Lightning Thrash Metal | review permalink
IRON MAIDEN - Powerslave NWoBHM | review permalink
METALLICA - Master of Puppets Thrash Metal | review permalink
CANDLEMASS - Epicus Doomicus Metallicus Traditional Doom Metal | review permalink
SLAYER - Reign in Blood Thrash Metal | review permalink
KING DIAMOND - Abigail Heavy Metal | review permalink
TROUBLE - Run to the Light Traditional Doom Metal | review permalink

See all reviews/ratings

Metal Genre Nb. Rated Avg. rating
1 Non-Metal 184 3.84
2 Progressive Metal 176 3.76
3 Heavy Metal 153 3.67
4 Black Metal 124 3.72
5 Hard Rock 122 3.53
6 Metal Related 108 3.81
7 Power Metal 85 3.46
8 Thrash Metal 81 3.76
9 Proto-Metal 78 3.74
10 Atmospheric Black Metal 66 3.86
11 Doom Metal 58 3.77
12 Gothic Metal 58 3.38
13 Death Metal 55 3.92
14 Traditional Doom Metal 46 3.88
15 US Power Metal 43 3.44
16 Stoner Metal 40 3.77
17 Avant-garde Metal 40 3.83
18 Industrial Metal 36 3.47
19 Symphonic Black Metal 30 3.20
20 Technical Death Metal 25 3.84
21 Melodic Death Metal 25 3.94
22 Death-Doom Metal 24 4.08
23 Melodic Black Metal 22 3.91
24 Atmospheric Sludge Metal 20 3.98
25 Hardcore Punk 19 4.21
26 Heavy Psych 17 4.12
27 Funeral Doom Metal 15 3.70
28 Folk Metal 14 3.36
29 Symphonic Metal 14 3.04
30 NWoBHM 13 4.23
31 Alternative Metal 12 3.25
32 Speed Metal 12 3.83
33 Technical Thrash Metal 12 4.13
34 Sludge Metal 11 3.95
35 Depressive Black Metal 10 3.45
36 Drone Metal 9 4.00
37 Funk Metal 9 3.78
38 Groove Metal 8 3.31
39 Viking Metal 8 3.63
40 Crust Punk 6 2.75
41 Brutal Death Metal 5 3.70
42 Grindcore 5 4.10
43 Death 'n' Roll 4 4.50
44 Crossover Thrash 2 4.50
45 Glam Metal 2 2.50
46 Pagan Black Metal 2 3.50
47 Nu Metal 2 4.00
48 War Metal 2 3.00
49 Stoner Rock 2 3.50
50 Metalcore 1 3.00
51 Neoclassical metal 1 4.00
52 Heavy Alternative Rock 1 3.00
53 Mathcore 1 3.00

Latest Albums Reviews

GENITORTURERS 120 Days of Genitorture

Album · 1993 · Industrial Metal
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There's several acts out there that ended up incorporating a BDSM performance art angle into their stage shows back in the 1990s, particularly on the industrial scene. Some of these were clearly doing this either to cover for a lack of interesting music, or merely adopted it as a cool, edgy aesthetic, but on their debut album the Genitorturers combine an apparent passion for the subject matter with pretty solid tunes and performances.

The core of the band is married couple Gen and David Vincent. At this point in time, this was a side project for David, since his main gig was in Morbid Angel - but it's Gen who takes on frontwoman duties and brings this vicious, almost gutteral edge to her vocals. Lots of 1990s metal groups were going for a "beauty and the beast" aesthetic where the female vocalist was meant to sound as pretty as possible and leave anything remotely harsh to her male counterparts; Gen doesn't get into outright death metal growls here, but she does give the impression of being a woman you absolutely do not want to cross, defiantly roaring about sexual subject matter with a disarming frankness which really helps the overall aesthetic.

As far as the backing goes - it's 1990s industrial metal of a fairly commercially-leaning sort. It's a few notches more metallic than what the likes of, say, Marilyn Manson were putting out at the time, but it ends up at a point where it manages to be extreme without being enormously innovative. If you're quite into the 1990s industrial metal style and think Gen's vocals are enjoyable and the lyrical subject matter appeals, 120 Days of Genitorture will seem like a grand old time, but it's never going to be seen as the most truly groundbreaking and experimental of industrial metal efforts.

RUSH R30: 30th Anniversary World Tour

Movie · 2005 · Hard Rock
Cover art Buy this album from MMA partners
As with Rush In Rio, this came out in DVD and CD versions, depending on whether you want the visuals or just the audio. And as with Rush In Rio, the crowd is just a wee bit too prominent in the mix to my tastes - we heard them cheering at the start, gang, we don't need more reminders when they were there when the draw is Rush's music. Beyond the R30 Overture medley, this is largely the sort of thing we've heard extensively before, and generally speaking I find latter-day Rush live albums are less notable than earlier ones, in part because the band got so polished that the live renditions of their material don't really differ enough from the studio versions to feel fresh.

RUSH Rush in Rio

Live album · 2003 · Hard Rock
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Expansive live album, accompanying the DVD of the same name. Of course, the DVD has the advantage of the visuals, which perhaps helps the vibe in those moments when the crowd noise gets quite loud in the mix - which happens fairly frequently, enough so that it starts to bug me. The band are on impeccable form, of course, but precisely because of that this can come across as just a polished rendition of the studio versions of the song with intrusive crowd noise breaking in here and there to undermine it. Alright if you want a whole lot of Rush songs spanning their entire career (as it stood in 2002) all in one place, but not their best live effort to my ears.

RUSH Grace Under Pressure Tour

Live album · 2009 · Non-Metal
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Grace Under Pressure is one of the better albums from Rush's synthesiser-oriented period, which was a stylistic departure which wasn't to everyone's tastes. To date, the main official live release from this era was A Show of Hands, which naturally focused on songs new to the era rather with only Closer To the Heart pre-dating it - as a result, it didn't really reflect their actual setlists of the time.

This live document of the Grace Under Pressure tour redresses the balance by offering something a bit closer to actual concert setlists of the time (though it's a bit truncated at just over an hour long, rather than presenting a full-length show). With more guitar-heavy songs in the mix, this results in a more varied sound than the studio album, though there's still a strong focus on recent-ish songs - the only pre-Permanent Waves tune played in full is Closer To the Heart, and there's a few more fragments present as components of the two medleys which bracket Vital Signs towards the end, and that's it.

Still, the sound here is rockier than that presented on A Show of Hands - the material on that was recorded in 1986-1988, when Rush had gone even deeper into synth territory and had heavily layered their studio compositions to the point where to reproduce them onstage they had to resort to a certain amount of preprogrammed synth parts, curtailing the scope to deviate from the studio renditions of songs and lending a somewhat cold and overly-polished air to proceedings. In contrast, it's apparent here that in 1984 the band were still a bit looser and more organic onstage, which is generally helpful, and so it's quite handy for giving a broader picture of what Rush were doing live in this period.

It's not perfect; the overall sound a bit muffled to me, and the audience is overly present in the mix. At the same time, that very lack of perfection makes this the ideal counterpoint to the overly precise Show of Hands.

MOUNTAIN WITCH Extinct Cults

Album · 2020 · Doom Metal
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Brief, fairly straight-ahead doom metal effort with strong trad doom and hard rock influences. The cover art is neat and the production helps evoke an early doom sound, but precisely because the imitation of the early doom style is so close, if you're into the likes of Pentagram or Saint Vitus or Trouble then you've probably heard plenty of heavier, doomier takes on very similar material before. I could have done with a touch more psych in the balance here; as it stands, this is the sort of thing I can have in the background happily and enjoy myself when it's there, but don't really remember much compelling about once the music stops playing.

Latest Forum Topic Posts

  • Posted more than 2 years ago in Scott Kelly (Neurosis) retires from music
    Coming to this late but echoing what other people have said: I don't trust Kelly's statement an inch.I've known people who've gotten into a cycle of regularly making big dramatic apologies for their behaviour and spurting all sorts of promises they're going to change... but actually, the apologies and promises are what they do instead of working on themselves. They just use them as a delaying tactic to convince people to give them a bit more time before writing them off entirely.Apparently, this isn't the first time Scott's done this particular dance - just the most public one - so it smells like a similar situation to me. If the band don't see any reason to back him up on this - and they might have been out of touch with him a while, but they surely know him better than me - I don't see any reason to differ.
  • Posted more than 2 years ago in A name for "progressive metal punk?"
    If most of the examples LightningRider's thinking of are usually described as some flavour of 'core, why not just go with "progcore"?
  • Posted more than 2 years ago in Sean Reinert R.I.P.
    An ugly coda to the story: despite strongly believing in organ donation, and despite the fact that he was clean of STDs, Sean's wish to donate his organs was denied simply because he was a gay man with a normal, active sex life:https://www.metalsucks.net/2020/02/11/sean-reinerts-organ-donor-request-was-denied-because-of-his-sexual-orientation/If any of us want to do some small thing in Sean's memory, I'd say making a monetary donation to a charity that supports transplant patients wouldn't be a terrible idea.

Shouts

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Stephen wrote:
more than 2 years ago
agree, welcome to the site and please keep them coming friend
UMUR wrote:
more than 2 years ago
You write some really good quality reviews. I hope to see more from you in the future.

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