Warthur

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

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1922 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 125 3.72
5 Hard Rock 124 3.52
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 37 3.49
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

SIGH Infidel Art

Album · 1995 · Black Metal
Cover art Buy this album from MMA partners
After starting out as a Japanese outpost of straight-ahead second wave-styled black metal - right down to releasing their debut album on Deathlike Silence Productions, the label run by Euronymous of Mayhem infamy, Sigh began their slow evolution into a more experimental progressive avant-black unit here. Don't expect the latter style to emerge fully formed - if you want that, go check out the followup, Hail Horror Hail - but do expect tightened-up production and an intriguing mixture of thrash-tinged black metal and more symphonic elements.

Sigh were hardly alone in the second wave black metal scene in experimenting with such a mix, of course - Dimmu Borgir have pretty much built a career out of it - but it's through these experimental features, with some influence from traditional Japanese music and instrumentation, that Sigh begin to break away from the pack. The standard-issue black metal corpsepaint previously worn proudly on the cover of their debut, Scorn Defeat, is beginning to wash away here, and what's underneath is stranger and more intriguing than anyone dared hope for.

RUSH Time Machine 2011: Live in Cleveland

Live album · 2011 · Hard Rock
Cover art Buy this album from MMA partners
Time Machine is perhaps one of the more inessential live Rush albums. They'd put out enough of these at this point that most devoted fans will have multiple live versions of much of this material already, and they hadn't put out a new studio album between this and Snakes & Arrows so there's significant overlap with Snakes & Arrows Live. The audience is also too prominent in the mix - almost as though to prove that this was recorded live rather than just consisting of studio runthroughs - which is a problem which also affected R30 and Rush In Rio.

But on top of all that, this captures the band on an off-night! Geddy Lee apparently had a terrible cold, but bravely performed anyway, and whilst that was nice for the people live in attendance at the same thing I feel like it should have prompted them to cancel the recording and just record a different gig on the tour instead - or, even more sensibly, just tape several gigs on the tour and pick the best one. And if they did the latter and decided that this was the one to release live anyway, that's mildly embarrassing to say the least.

RUSH Snakes & Arrows Live

Live album · 2008 · Hard Rock
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Snakes and Arrows Live is a live album where the sheer precision of the band in bringing their material to the stage works against them - it's basically like listening to a rather long Rush mix tape with some applause sounds in it. I have to give it the edge over Rush In Rio and R30, because those are two albums where for whatever reason the crowd sound was allowed to intrude on the music a touch too much for my taste, but at the same time it does feel like the band clocking in, delivering entirely standard and acceptable performances of their material, and clocking out again. Good, sure, but if you're a Rush fan you've heard better live renditions of most of these and the new stuff probably isn't in your top tier of Rush tracks.

GENITORTURERS Sin City

Album · 1998 · Industrial Metal
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The Genitorturers' second album is the first one with David Vincent as a full-time member of the band - he'd previously done bass here and there but hadn't joined officially, but by this stage he'd left Morbid Angel to give his full attention to his then-wife Gen's industrial metal project. Horny industrial stuff like this was ten a penny back in the late 1990s, of course; Sin City's 1998 release date more or less coincides with peak Marilyn Manson. Yet whilst Manson put a lot of energy into creating the impression he was making some sort of deep artistic statement which just happened to use lots of alternatingly creepy and horny imagery for esoteric reasons, the Genitorturers don't bother to conceal what their ambitions are: they want to be the ideal soundtrack for your local BDSM club, and with a combination of sexually charged lyrics, catchy industrial metal, and a sense of kinky, edgy fun running through the album, they more or less succeed.

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.

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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