There's something magical and 'otherworldly' about Live Evil, IMO. The performance and delivery of those songs perfectly match the grandeur of the cover art.
With the passage of time, I find myself favoring it over other classic live albums such as "Unleashed in the East" and "Live After Death".

Flash forward ~25 years and they deliver another winner in "Radio City". The 'magic & mystery' really isn't there but the performance was stellar. A fine return to form.

Necrot - "Mortal"
Just discovering this band now...absolutely love this, a perfect execution of all that's great about classic DM.

For me, "Radio City" has the added advantage of not featuring any Ozzy-era tracks because… Dio's re-interpretations aren't exactly masterpieces. I think you have to be a Dio fan (which I'm not) to enjoy him playing around with Ozzy's vocal lines, which are simple but unique. With Tony Martin it didn't work out either as he himself would've never written vocal lines like those in the first place. Simple, clear, accessible melody arcs that function without any bluesy ad-libs. A style completely different to Dio's and Martin's. The only Sabbath cover I like is Faith No More's "War Pigs", but, well, Patton wasn't being serious, so he wasn't trying to upstage the original but entertain with his usual aubergines and bananas.

NP: "Radio City". Still. Not finished yet.

Bruce Dickinson - The Mandrake Project
Jethro Tull - Aqualung
Morgana Lefay - Maleficium
Solstice - New Dark Age
My Dying Bride - A Mortal Binding

Somehow the new Bruce and this Tull album fit together for me... both good and lyrical, and they both flow really well as albums. Been meaning all week to really sit down with the ML and Solstice properly. And gonna try the new MDB too... a busy day for music...

Darkthrone - His Master's Voice

Besides The Underground Resistance, I don't get much joy out of this era of Darkthrone. Here's hoping this record will be another exception to the rule.

Strigoii - Transcendental Fires of Fallen Cherubim

This one's a struggle towards the end of the album with not a lot going on,kind of monotonous.It's a shame as everything else on offer here is full of dark and haunting vampyric obscurities.The cover still freaks me out and the last instrumental gives me chills.

Solstice - New Dark Age

Really love it... might be my favorite by them. The riffs are just so punishingly good, and the songs constructed with real sweep. The folk parts sound like they were dug out of a medieval vault somewhere. Morris Ingram's voice is peculiar for this - he'd be a great folk singer, and he doesn't really have any kind of muscular tone or power, but it meshes with the heavy parts anyway. It works. The whole thing has this really wistful and romantic tone but also an apocalyptic bent. Darkness and light working together in a way.

MOONLIGHT BLUE by Miracle Of Sound ft. Sharm (Elden Ring) (Ranni)

I've been browsing youtube passing some time waiting for Record Store Day and got caught up in some Anime/Game Music Videos. Most of these aren't metal, except the Warhammer 40k videos which go heavy on the Sabaton and Manowar songs.

But it's the Original songs that I find the most interesting right now.

Bendy and the Ink Machine has one of the higher ratio's of crap to gold and running across one of these again had me digging into my old links to find my stash of some old but goodies like:

Alice's Tango
All Eyes On Me
Angel of the Stage
Bendy and the Ink Musical
Blood and Ink
Build Our Machine
Gospel of Dismay
Instruments of Cyanide
The Devil's Swing

Malokarpartan - I Hle, Tak Zachadza Imperialna Hviezda

Still getting to grips with the new one as theirs a lot to take in but i'm liking it so far.They seem to have toned down the archaic guitar tone since the previous one,maybe that old amp finally melted and crawled away which should have disappointed me more but no,this time the music and composition of it is a lot more interesting.

Satan's Hallow - s/t

Wow, that's some tasty ripping old-school heavy metal right there. Dig those vocals and the riffs are sweet as fuck.

Dead Can Dance - Persephone (The Gathering of Flowers)

Immense atmosphere and powerful vocals.

Burzum - Umskiptar

I fell asleep listening to this, boring as fuck. I will never attempt to listen to it again coz life's too fuckin short.

Marduk - Glorification Of The Black God

Top 3 Marduk right here.Spinning the extra shiney vinyl that osmose repressed and it sounds great but why they had to cloud out and darken the artwork is beyond me.
Got the cd booklet out instead just to defy them.

Very good album.

I like everything Defiance has done so far. I hear they're working on a new album; let's hope it's another great album!

Manilla Road - Abattoir de la mort

Dark and awesome stuff from Manilla Road!

Wolf - Legions of Bastards

Wolf's good form continued with their 6th album. Legions of Bastards is a nice snd varied collection of tunes from storming opener Vicious Companions, through the priestly Full Moon Possession and the brooding banger Nocturnal Rites.
Once again it should be shorter, my version has 13 songs and it could easily shed 4 or 5 tracks and be much better for it. Which tracks to cull? Well pick anything after track 7 Nocturnal Rites and I doubt I'd miss them.
All in all, despite the unnecessary filler, its another worthy Wolf album.

C grade thrash at best. There's literally thousands of other album's I'd rather listen to. And fuck that is some truly shitty artwork.

Awesome early 1990s thrash metal that should appeal to fans of Demolition Hammer and Devastation.

My Dying Bride - A Mortal Binding

Sounds nice and gloomy - pretty good like most of the stuff I hear from them. Nice and heavy - a lot of droning hypnotic melodies. Aaron as a singer is strange - definitely one of these guys who's not really technically over the top or anything but who fits the band like a glove because he's put so much into it.

Mael Mórdha - Gealtacht Mael Mórdha

Fuck yeah this is awesome stuff. Epic metal with plenty of folky instruments employed to give it some serious atmosphere. The band call their style Gaelic Doom Metal, whatever it is it fuckin rules.

Satyricon - Live at the Opera

"Satyr and Frost sitting in a tree, K.I.N.G." But seriously, this is awesome. The choir is tastefully arranged and the sound is great.

Good to see this immense and unique act get some love here. Absolutely love DCD.

Rush - Xanadu

Grabbed this vinyl today, been looking to replace the copy I screwed up trying to clean. The build up on this is one of my favorite things in music. The way the drums keep building and expanding is just exquisite.

Odal - ...wilde Kraft
Great pagan-tinged black metal with a lot of verve and urgent sound. The songs flow really well and the album rarely slows momentum. Guitars sound so huge and overpowering. A record with a lot of life energy in it, blood is really surging through the veins on this one. Oh and riffs... yeah it's got some fucking riffs.

Power Trip - Live in Seattle

A raging live set. Very glad they are continuing.

One of pinnacles of musical history

That debut was indeed quite nice. Absolutely typical Bay Area thrash, nothing to write home about and no surprises but a good option if you want more of that late 80s Testament sound.

"Listening to King Diamond's offspring, Part 9":

Attic – Return of the Witchfinder

Another delicious offering from the falsettos from the pit to the mass of raisers of the horned hand. Unlike King, Attic's singer seems to utilise his pile of different voices not as a means to voice different characters but is all over the place (I don't know how consistent King is in that department though). And unlike their second album, "Sanctimonious", where the atmosphere was darker, the songs more fluid and the flow more suspenseful, "Return of the Witchfinder" is a mixed bag: their most powerful production yet meets compositions that are just not as catchy and a tiny bit more disjointed than before. Will "Sanctimonious" (8/10) be their magnum opus? I hope not. 7/10

PS: In "The Baleful Baron", I've found an (un)intentional tribute to Flash Gordon (e.g. 0:53-0:56) which I find (un)intentionally funny.

(Previous installments in the award-winning Listening to King Diamond's offspring series: Attic / In Solitude, Candle, Dark Night / A Tortured Soul / King Diamond Projekt / Them, Evil)

Triptykon - "Melana Chasmata"
I love the 'weird and wonderful' places Tom G Warrior's music takes you. This album is a fine addition to TGW's canon of darkly adventurous musical journeys.

Solstice - "White Horse Hill"
I saw this band mentioned a few times in the lists above which prompted me to dust this one off and give it a spin. I'd not listened to it more than twice and that was a few years ago upon its release.

Really digging it...it's a very 'clean' form of epic doom. It emits more of a sense of "victory" than of "despair", whilst still projecting the "longing" that's common with epic doom. Some fantastic melodies throughout.

This one is interesting because it's so economical; just three real doom songs and then a lot of cool atmospheric parts. It's very complete.

Decayed - Cry Wolf

Something about this thugging, old school fuckin riff style always gets me going. Just propulsive and fucking awesome.

Varathron - Hegemony of Chaos

First spinn on the newest album.
Sounds great!

Running through a few Death Metal EPs while I'm watching a baseball game.
It is nuts to see that it is still snowing in parts of this country right now, I'm a Florida native and the sun is shining
Rare to see it in a baseball game.

Unnecessary Surgery- Hauled Off In Chunks
https://www.metal-archives.com/albums/U ... ks/1066880
Parasite Disciple- Auditory Hallucinations
https://www.metal-archives.com/albums/P ... ns/1189244
Insidious Torture- Lust and Decay
https://www.metal-archives.com/albums/I ... cay/271057
Backstabber- Revenge
https://www.metal-archives.com/albums/B ... nge/559477

Cheers

Dalriada- Jegbunto

Relistening to one of my favorite folk metal albums of all time, god this band really is amazing. I think this is the album where they tended to stick to more guitar oriented melodies versus the later violins etc, which is both great. The riffs are so god damn catchy, Védj meg, láng!, 1. rész is incredible.

Obituary - s/t

Almost as good as Dying of Everything.

Renascent - Praise of the Lord God Almighty

Good symphonic unblack/death.

Paramaecium - Exhumed of the Earth

Reminds me of early Paradise Lost but more accessible.

I wouldn't call an album with three 10 minute tracks accessible.

NP: Envenomed - Active Cosmic Putrefaction

Killer Chilean thrash/death metal. Sounds like Ripper.

40 Watt Sun - all three albums
I'd never heard a note of this band until yesterday. But they showed up on MA as being 'doom metal', which I was researching.

Gave them a shot and have been blown away by their emotional, yet simplistic, approach to melancholy. Ordered all three albums instantly.

Hemelbestormer - In Praise of Sun

Great postmetal track. Invokes images of space, stars and everything dangerous out there.

My Dying Bride - Kneel till Doomday

Heavy, driving guitars, interesting vocal lines and a quick death metal outburst. One of their best songs, I reckon.

Tony Martin - Thorns

At the time I was kind of hoping this album would be better than it is... the old curse of expectations, and it's not exactly a masterpiece, too many songs are just good rather than great. But it is a fucking heavy, pounding good time. I hope he does at least a few more albums.

Deep Purple - "Burn"
The discussion about Martin-era Sabbath in another thread prompted me to throw this gem on. The tracks "Burn" and "Mistreated" are among the greatest songs ever recorded, IMO.
"Burn" is such a rager...the organ and guitar solos are sonic perfection. This song possesses me and forces me to drive fast! LOL