Massive Assault - Death Strike (2012)

Massive Assault is another one of those outsider bands who truly draws upon the Swedish old school roots to the extent that their own nationality (Dutch) becomes moot. Death Strike transports its prospective audience straight back to the 1988-1990 period, when bands like Nihilist/Entombed, Carnage and Dismember were approaching liftoff with their early recordings, and creatively they do not deviate far from the path. Perhaps there is a stronger punk and hardcore influence circa Discharge than a Left Hand Path or Like an Ever Flowing Stream, certainly more than a lot of the comparable upstarts you'll hear these days, but vocally and structurally these guys stick with what works, both to their credit and detriment.

A thick coat of fuzz is applied to the guitars, sort of the Sunlight style beefed up, and it totally churns up the ear canals, working as intended. The vocals have a rather brute edge to them redolent of the usual suspects like L-G Petrov or Ola Lindgren, perhaps a bit less impressive in the range and timbre of their delivery, but efficient enough. As early as the first track, "Driven Towards Death", you get a real feel for that punk influence I had mentioned, especially in that melodic riff around 2:40 which a sliver of indie rock gleam, but this is of course balanced off with far rougher guitar progressions, in particular a nice, dense tremolo picked sequence threaded in the verses. Other tracks like "Cycle of Violence" and "Finished Sympathy" have some pretty sick breakdowns, the former in which the drums cut out to heighten the impact and tone of the main riff, and the latter more of a mosh fueled, slower groove that keeps on thrashing for the majority of the playtime. These are tempered with a few slower, crushers reminiscent of Obituary like "Dismal Life" or some straight shots of late 80s death like "Chained".

There is certainly a huge range of acts currently deployed in this field, and Massive Assault writes with a sense of confidence and competence comparable to many of their contemporaries, possibly with a marginal increase in variation. That said, the band isn't quite so dark, heavy and crushingly potent as what a Tormented or Miasmal brings to the game, and I'd place them more alongside Swedes Mr. Death in overall style, or perhaps Mordbrand and Brutally Deceased, two other European bands abroad inspired by those same root Swedish influences. Death Strike is a fun enough record for a few spins, and I dig the loyal adherence to the old guitar tone and pungent production, but ultimately I felt like it had no lasting effect, just another familiar carcass thrown upon an overstocked heap of bands seeking a similar fortune through a loyal adherence to and abuse of their influences. Didn't love it, but certainly didn't hate it.

Verdict: Indifference [6.75/10]

http://massiveassault.tk/

Waning - The Human Condition (2012)

In a world where drifting, melodic post-black metal acts are all the rage of late, it's practically offensive to me that Swedes Waning have not garnered more attention for their curious take on the style. Why spend the time and energy absorbing monotonous, effortless paeans to emptiness like the recent Lantlôs or Altar of Plagues releases when there is something so much more vibrant and effective just around the corner? Population Control was a promising lattice of compact drums, huge swaths of guitar tone and an almost organic influx of nihilistic urban-industrial subtext that permeated both the lyrics and composition; and it's successor, The Human Condition does it proud, if anything broadening the scope of the unsung quintet.

The guitars are kept simple, brazen and loud through cuts like "Beneath a Septic Sun", "Void" and "Continuum", presenting a cautious balance of consonance and dissonance while they wreak emotional trauma upon the audience. Virile melodic strains will often manifest off the primary thrust of the chords, but the careful threading of the bass against the dominant riffs creates a curious level of warmth and immersion, almost as if one were glimpsing out through a fluid womb to the blinding penetration of sunlight. Waning plays a lot with the tempo of beats, so that even a more straight ahead, driving riff is given an almost mechanical variation beneath, but the best parts of The Human Condition arrive when all of the varying instruments condense into some saddening contemporary black/doom passage like the bridge of the title track, through which tremolo picked guitars careen like crashing tears until the drums drop and create the bright, droning apparition of a climax.

Another contributor to the atmosphere is the vocal presence, which proves dynamic enough that no two tracks sound quite alike. Many feature the massive, drowning black rasp expected of the modern black metal genre, but then you've got a piece like the excellent "Through Fields of Mercury" in which a more somber, bitter tone is used to set up the more barbaric snarl. I could definitely make out an almost post-2000 Katatonia influence to the compositions, only this group embeds the dreamy, depressive riffing into a louder skeletal mechanism redolent of bands as widespread as Thorns, Neurosis, Void and Thralldom. The Human Condition doesn't haunt you from the woodlands, or harry you from antiquity, but it boldly screams at you from the surrounding, suffocating walls of brick, steel and plastic of the dystopia so many of us find ourselves lost in. It's abrasive and yet strangely calming, as if just knowing its pains are alive in your synapses is a comfort, and to that extent, I would place it just inches beyond its predecessor in terms of achievement and quality. Worth hearing.

Verdict: Win [8.25/10]

http://www.facebook.com/WaningOfficial

Bathory - Destroyer of Worlds (2001)

Destroyer of Worlds is an aural exhibition of an important, almost constantly evolving artist who had at long last firmly settled into a particular style, or rather two particular styles, and thus it bears some striking similarities to both the past Bathory canons of the glorious Hammerheart, Twilight of the Gods and Blood On Ice Viking heavy metal trilogy, and the sodden and boring thrash that Quorthon thought for some reason he'd dial in during the mid 90s. The roots of both are set in the grimier blackness of Quorthon's youth, but now structurally manifest through either an emphasis on soaring male choirs, lead guitars reminiscent of the slower Manowar fare, and simplistic riffs that do not exactly inspire outside of their presentation as an atmospheric component; or in lame duck, barreling thrash rhythms that seem effectively pedestrian in intent and impact.

The problems I ran into with this album stem largely from its clear division of content. If one were to glance back at the discography, nothing here is necessarily new or out of place, but there is a crippling inconsistency to how the album flows as a whole. Sorrowful, plodding sequences like "Ode" or "Destroyer of Worlds" provide nostalgia for Hammerheart or Twilight of the Gods, but then you've got the clear delineation between that and a piece like "Death from Above", which while not as miserable as, say, Octagon, is at best fueled by mediocrity, cliche and a guitar riff that some random groove/thrash bar band in 1994 might have thrown together at a moment's notice. To Quorthon's credit, he at least tries to create a bridge between these two forces, this ying and yang: you'll hear some atmosphere, distant synths and such in a few of the thrash bits, but then you've got others like "Liberty and Justice" or the pure groove shite "Sudden Death" which amount to nothing more than massive crap stains over any potential the album might have woven.

Destroyer of Worlds is in dire need of a clipping, so swelled is it with middling content, so teemed with tripe. Not only the 6-7 shoddy bludgeoning thrashers (which, in addition to those mentioned include "109", "Pestilence", and the darker and mildly less annoying "Krom"); but also a few of the more spacious, drawn out pieces. For example, the 8+ minute closers "White Bones" and "Day of Wrath" seem rather dull and bloated: the former impregnated with some pedantic groove metal rhythms in the bridge, the latter for its almost Pink Floyd like progression and inane self-referential lyrics in the third verse. You know you're really running out of ideas when this happens, and this is yet another flaw with Destroyer. It retreads numerous prior trends in Quorthon's composition, but it offers no superior or even interesting slant on any of them...

I'm not willing to entirely throw this album under the bus. It's more of a weak and confused effort than one actively terrible, but at its best, even songs like "Ode", "Lake of Fire" and the title track are underwhelming, average shadows of past glories. The album never feels as if it's transitional, whereas just about every important step of the past felt exciting and revolutionary. Many other bands had by this point taken up the Norse mythos crown conceptually (Enslaved, Amon Amarth etc), so it makes sense that Quorthon was no longer exclusively focused there lyrically, but despite the broader prose, the music itself is not reflective of such expansion. The production values are fairly level throughout, the boxy and dense guitar tone and vocals being consistent even when he's shifting ranges, but as an album it feels both redundant and conflicted, indecisive about the next steps and thus suckling at the teat of prior missteps and majesties.

Verdict: Indifference [5.25/10] (encased in lead and steel)

Bathory - Katalog (2001)

This is one of those perplexing releases that reeks of 'you have got to be fucking kidding me'. Just a few short years after Bathory had finished producing the largely useless Jubileum compilations, they go ahead and release ANOTHER. Katalog is your standard cash cow collection featuring entirely re-issued material. There are 11 tracks culled from the 10 studio albums (including the latest, Destroyer of Worlds), and presumably the intent was to con some young sucker into purchasing this as a 'sampler' of what to buy and experience next. Katalog was initially intended to be a promotional device only, so I assume it was meant for radio stations, zines or shops, but it was eventually decided to produce it in a commercial format.

The only way this works is as some sort of case study on the various transformations wrought through Bathory's career, but even then it's not worth the $.02, since you could just as easily build your own mix CD or shuffle your .mp3 playlist and achieve the same results. You'd assume each selection is meant to best represent the particular album it was initially released upon, but fuck if that's the case for the crappy Octagon ("War Supply") or average Requiem ("Distinguish to Kill"), which don't necessarily have good, at least not great songs. From the earlier archives, we get "Armageddon" (Bathory, 1984), "Possessed" (The Return..., 1985), "Enter the Eternal Fire" (Under the Sign of the Black Mark, 1987), a medley of "Odens Ride Over Nordland/A Fine Day to Die" (Blood Fire Death, 1988) and "One Rode to Asa Bay" (Hammerheart, 1990). All are good choices, but at the same time, more poignant when listened to in their native environment. Rounding out the track list are "Lake of Fire" from their new (for the time) effort Destroyer of Worlds, "The Woodwoman" from Blood On Ice and "Twilight of the Gods" from the album of the same name, plus another of the band's dingy, brief outros, a useless inclusion.

And that's it. No unreleased material, strong remixes or re-recordings, etc. Had this been a bonus disc included with Destroyer of Worlds (dropping "Lake of Fire"), it might have proved a sweet little perk aimed at younger fans who were not familiar with the band's legacy, but as a standalone product it's shit. Might as well just procure an envelope, stuff some cash or a check in it and send off to Black Mark Production asking for nothing in return. In the end, this is just as void of worth as those Lake of Tears compilations Black Mark churned out in 2004.

Verdict: Epic Fail [0/10]

Bathory - Jubileum Vol. III (1998)

Because two near worthless Jubileum compilations were not enough, it was decided that a third be released 5 years later to incorporate material from Quorthon's mid-90s identity crisis circa Requiem and Octagon. Now, I'm not quite sure why such albums, the first quite mediocre and the latter downright awful would warrant such a treatment. Any masochist who was interested in such letdowns could surely just purchase them at barely double the cost, and there are no 'greatest hits' to be had in either case. The refinished songs included here from Blood On Ice had been so recently given an official album release that they also had no pressing need for a reprint, and they are so stylistically jarring to the content from the previous two full lengths that this is by far the most inconsistent of the comps.

Jubileum Vol. III presents one hour of material, 9 of its 15 tracks previously released through the 90s. From Requiem (1994), we get "War Machine", "Pax Vobiscum" and "Crosstitution"; from Octagon (1995) "Immaculate Pinetreeroad #930", "Sociopath" and "33 Something"; and from the entirely different Blood On Ice we've got "The Lake", "The Stallion" and "Gods of Thunder of Wind and of Rain". Not an an impressive roster by any standards, though I favor the last three simply because they are part of Quorthon's return to common sense, and the Norse themes he had begun to explore upon the masterwork Blood Fire Death. Even then, though, these are far better experienced on the full-length album with their neighbors, almost out of place among the more boring, straightforward thrashers. So in other words, about 60% of this collection is a rehash of null value.

We are left with the unreleased material, which hails from all over the spectrum. "Satan My Master" is the best of the lot, a pure grimy speed/black metal track from the s/t debut years which has eventually developed into one of their most popular classic tracks (covered by a large number of the bands they've influenced). Not that it's really one of their best, but the riffs are pure honest bludgeoning with Quorthon's rasp splattered all over them, and almost a punk undercurrent in the bass and chords. Another oldie called "Witchcraft" is here, a nice savage rush of gnarled speed with scintillating guitars, though the vocal bark is a bit repressed in the mix. "In Nomine Satanas" was the original incarnation of the track "Bond of Blood" which was later recorded for Twilight of the Gods, but obviously the subject matter was changed. I rather like this raw interpretation, but it's not cool enough that I'd go out of my way for it. Other than these, we're treated to an alternate vocal take on "Valhalla" (Hammerheart); and a pair of mediocre mid paced groove/thrashers in "Resolution Greed" and "Genocide" which probably didn't make it to the miserable Octagon and wouldn't have helped if they had.

In short, not a lot worth a damn, and I once again am left baffled as to why the rarer demo and cult tracks from all three of the Jubileum releases weren't just gathered in one place. Instead, Boss and Quorthon must have felt we all owed them another 30-50 dollars for next to nothing. Comparatively, Jubileum Vol. III might have more unreleased material than either of the earlier compilations, but as a collection of music of note, it pretty much sucks a bone. Better to listen to "Satan My Master" and "Witchcraft" elsewhere and save the scratch.

Verdict: Fail [3.5/10]

Nominon - Manifestation of Black EP (2011)

Nominon were one of those Swedish acts barely filling out their death metal diapers when countrymen like Entombed and Dismember were already establishing names for themselves, and yet the fact that their existence dates back to 1993 puts them well ahead of the hordes of Left Hand Path wannabes we've heard in recent years. To date, they've produced a number of solid full length efforts like Diabolical Bloodshed (1999) and Recremation (2005) which provide the same tangible excitement as their forefathers, without seeming like 100% derivatives. To supplement their four albums, they've issued a number of short player EPs through their history, the latest of which is Manifestation of Black through their latest imprint, Deathgasm Records.

Obviously the value here is somewhat confined due to its brevity, but for what it's worth, the title track is one of the best the band has written in some years, with solid tremolo riffing and unbridled, demonic energy redolent of some of the heavier Dismember records. The tones are not a far cry from their most recent full-length Monumentomb: grimy and muddy distortion which leans more towards an organic representation than a heavily polished one, immediately creating an inherent, murky darkness that honors its title. "Burnt Human Offering" follows suit, not a hell of a lot more charming than the first track but fully consistent in style, and I do like the thrashing impulses buried near its aft. The drums and guitars here are quite rich, the bass appropriately dense and shadowing the rest of the mix, while the latest vocalist Henke Skoog gives a ghoulish performance that would make L-G Petrov and Matti Kärki proud.

All told, you're only getting about 8-9 minutes of new music here, and who can tell if it's going to be included also on their next full-length (their last EP, Omen, was not exactly bristling with exclusive material). I wouldn't reach for this over Nominon's first three albums, but it's decent and gritty old school death metal from one of Sweden's longest lived devotees of the form, and it has only to contend with its own shortness of breath.

Verdict: Win [7/10]

http://www.nominon.com/

Bathory - Blood on Ice (1996)

By the latter portion of the mid 90s, Quorthon was in desperate need of a turnaround, as his once mighty Bathory institution seemed to be unraveling at its seams; his writing devolved into phoned in, dull thrash and groove metal which wouldn't have sufficed even a decade before its release, when the genre was still shaping up. I just don't see the appeal in creating a bold new genre of music, like the Norse themed folk-tinted metal that he manifest and progressed through the trio of Blood Fire Death, Hammerheart and Twilight of the Gods, and then sputtering out into something more pedestrian like Octagon, or Quorthon's grunge rock solo records, but thank fuck the man would come to his senses and return to the Viking path.

Granted, Blood On Ice was not a remarkable return to form. In fact, it wasn't even necessarily a new album, but enough of the content had been restored and supplemented from the original writing and recordings in 1988-89 that it feels like at least a sidereal movement from Twilight of the Gods. Originally, it would have served as a bridge between Blood Fire Death and its follower Hammerheart, and structurally, it's a lot like the latter. A lot of glorious, open passages guided by cleaner, layered vocals, with a handful of brief, folksy acoustic sequences ("Man of Iron", "The Ravens") to break up the more substantial bulk of the heavy metal tunes. Curiously, while I've never been the biggest fan of his cleaner vocal presence, Quorthon sounds admittedly tauter and more professional on some of these cuts than anything he'd done to their day (in 1995), and a few of the softer segments lend credibility that the guy could have written a pure folk record and built up a following that way.

Tunes like "Blood On Ice", "The Woodwoman" and "The Lake" rely heavily on their atmosphere just as much as Twilight of the Gods, so Bathory was continuing to move away from the central guitars so important to the first five records, instead writing riffs to support the woeful choirs of winter depression and unrest. But where this all comes together, like the acoustic sequence at around 3:50 in "The Woodwoman" or the enthusiastic canter of "Gods of Thunder of Wind and of Rain" which feels like Neil Young astride a long ship, you're getting a solid experience worthy at least of it's chronological predecessor Twilight of the Gods, if nowhere near as poignant and crushing as his seminal works in the style. There are some problems with the production, for instance the cheesy slap of the snare drum in "Blood On Ice", but in general, for something that was recorded and reworked from two different periods of Quorthon's career, it comes together fluidly.

My favorite tune here is surprisingly the expansive closer "The Revenge of the Blood on Ice", which more than any other places my psyche upon the same cold, battlestained vistas of the 1988-1990 material, and Bathory had long possessed a rare ability to write lengthy songs that incessantly draw the listener into their depths (since "Enter the Eternal Fire"). However, there is a bit of derivation and excess familiarity. For example, you'll hear a VERY familiar drum beat in the bridge of this piece, and a lot of the soothing, structured choir vocals feel as if they were just lifted from and slightly tweaked from Hammerheart. That said, compared to Octagon, this feels so enormously inspired, from the beautiful cover image to the obvious amount of effort Tomas placed in its salvage and reconstructive surgery. Rather than continue to crash along for another decade (aka Metallica), the Swede seems to have recognized his errors and righted them before they could run quickly out of control. Blood On Ice is not one of his best, but it comes near to compensation for the lackluster comps and albums that he'd been spewing forth since 1991.

Verdict: Win [7/10] (long tall beautiful people fallen lifeless to the ground)

Pharaoh - Bury the Light (2012)

How does one surpass what might arguably be considered the best melodic US power metal album of the 21st century to date? Be Gone was just such a piece, an effort of impeccable craftsmanship in its gleaming guitar architecture, tonal mastery and the pinnacle of Tim Aymar's balance of fragility and focused fire. Composition that drew equally from 80s power, speed and progressive titans like Fates Warning, Omen, Helstar, Savage Grace, yet brewed it into a modern froth of finesse and accessibility. How do you top it? Or, more accurately, how do you live up to it? In the case of Bury the Light, Pharaoh's fourth full-length, you continue forging along the same path, with the same standard for memorable hooks and rhythmic versatility, and prove once and for all that you're not a band capable of dishing out anything less than your best.

No, it's not quite so inspiring and flawless as Be Gone, but Bury the Light is still likely to go down as one of the best albums of its type in this or any other year beyond the brilliant 80s. I felt as if there was an even heavier technical thrash influence circa Heathen or Paradox in the riffs of tracks like "The Wolves" and "The Spider's Thread", and the overall atmosphere through the 9 tracks seems somewhat darker and moodier, but it's hard to deny the traditional flair of straight drivers like "Burn With Me" which can counter the rush of power chords with elegant muted dual melodies, transient leads and an incredible level of skill. Guitarist Matt Johnsen is simply a force with his instrument, and he performs in a clinical yet beautiful style that waxes both an absurd level of precision and an ear for flinging the listener into the vortex of majesty and sorrow that defines the pensive lyrical vistas. Next to his prowess, the rhythm duo of Chrises Kerns and Black has its work cut out for it, but the pair matches every calculated shift in tempo and exudes an aura of professional complexity that you just don't hear among others in this field...

Pharaoh is one of the few metal acts recording today which gleans the genre's possibilities for the future instead of miring itself solely in the past. Thus, while you might feel familiarity for the traditional, beloved power anthem in a piece like "Castles in the Sky", there is no escaping how 'current' it feels, how snappy and adventurous and void of stagnation. Johnsen's myriad melodies cascade about the album's atmosphere like drops of crystal rain colliding into one another. The aesthetics of illumination and tragedy are inescapable, and yet the rugged, multifaceted edge of Aymar's delivery grounds the material in a way that some wimpier, traditional Kiske or Tate like screamer simply wouldn't do. There is a light at the end of this tunnel. This music still matters. There is hope yet for the eventuality of this oft ailing, laurel resting genre, and its agent provocateurs are a bunch of old schoolers from Pennsylvania who prove, once again, unwilling to let nostalgia alone control their collective voice.

Verdict: Epic Win [9/10]

http://www.solarflight.net/

Bathory - Octagon (1995)

Oh, those 90s. Nearly every metal artist of credibility running smack dab into an identity crisis, trying to decide whether he or she should 'go with the flow' or stick to his or her guns. Strangely, Quorthon is not an individual whom I would have expected to succumb to such follies, but yet Octagon stands as another bitter pill to swallow, and the absolute low point for the career of Bathory. Down from the mountains of the late 80s, to the sea level of Requiem and now fully submerged in mediocre riffing and writing, disposable vocals and elements that the Viking or black metal connoisseur of Quorthon's fan bast must have found tasteless and confusing. I can only speak from my own experience, but this album was an immediate shelfer, and if I hadn't been so materially inclined to collect the band's whole legacy, grounds for an immediate return.

Don't be fooled by the eight-pointed parallel to the pentagram on the cover, or the traditional font used in the logo here, this is NOT the Bathory you'd grown accustomed to and not something Quorthon has or will ever be recognized for, outside of the obvious chinks in his armor that it represented. I've seen a lot of tell about how this is the groove/nu-metal Bathory record, and while it drifts closer to that clime than any other, it's more of a failed attempt at modern and grimy thrash redolent of what Slayer were doing post-Seasons in the Abyss. You might catch hints of similar structures to those used by Machine Head, System of a Down or other tripe emerging out of the 90s, but Slayer is the perfect comparison for Octagon, since there are a number of riffs here that seem pulled directly from the Hanneman/King playbook. For example, the descending thrash rush in the opener "Immaculate Pinetreeroad #930". The mix of grooves and primal thrashing in "Psychopath" or the bridge of "Schizianity". Or how about the vocal architecture in "Sociopath"? Ring any of hell's bells?

Nothing is straight lifted, of course, but I felt as bored and irritated by this album as I had been underwhelmed by a Divine Intervention or directly appalled by Diabolus in Musica. It's not that Octagon wholly lacks a personality, or a few 'experimental' touches. For instance, there are a lot of dissonant passages embedded in the guitars, or stolid and raw post Helhammer grooves in tunes like "Born to Die" or "Schizianity", but the riffs are almost without exception predictably patterned to the point of no return. Not one charming, resonant vocal line or memorable guitar progression exists throughout the entire play length, and even when songs like "War Supply" embellish the neanderthal thrashing with noisier, infected atmospheres it still feels no more entertaining than a taut morning struggle on the toilet after a few bowls of bowel sluicing fiber heavy cereal. The only song here I can't say I totally hate is the moody, mid paced "Century" slugger which sounds like Hellhammer and 90s Slayer in a circle stroke. But it's not good, either...

The album ends with a cover of "Deuce" from KISS, but in all honestly this sounds nothing like any other track on the entire album. A straight hard rock version with slightly more crushing guitar production and Quorthon's wild, slathering rasped vocals, but contextually it doesn't fit in with the remainder of Octagon. By extension, Octagon doesn't fit in or belong to the remainder of Bathory's discography. Not because it incorporates unwelcome, unimpressive groove metal elements or terrible lyrics in tracks like "Psychopath" that feel like something an angsty teen would pen after being the last picked for volleyball teams in Phys. Ed class, but because it just fucking sucks. The songwriting is lamentable, the vocals pathetic, and all the lofty ambitions of previous (and later) albums are rubbed into the mire of contemporary industry driven revolt.

Requiem might have been the first case in which a Bathory album failed to inspire me to set someone or something on fire, or dream of the Eddas, but Octagon was the first and only that I want to run over with my fucking car. It's not clever, it's not funny, it's not interesting and it's nowhere near acceptable.

Verdict: Fail [2.75/10] (this is my fucking despair)

Blind Guardian - Memories of a Time to Come (2012)

Interestingly enough, Blind Guardian has only smacked us once in the past with a compilation, and that was The Forgotten Tales in 1996, a gathering of odds, ends, covers and alternate versions that were previously only available on import singles and such. In fact, that collection was itself not domestically released at the time and I had to import it, but at least I was satisfied that I did not own much of the content. Well, that time has rolled around again, and once more the German power metal legends have satisfied this critic in that they show some due concern for their fans receiving a degree of value from what might have otherwise been a worthless repressing and reconfiguring of tracks to cash in on redundantly on their considerable, prior success.

No, most of the tracks here have at least been 'remixed'. Brightened and adjusted to meet the sleeker, 'modern' visage that Middle Earth's most lovable bards have presented on their latest studio full length At the Edge of Time. There's not a massive difference, in my opinion, and I doubt I'd ever spin this collection over the original incarnations, but the vocals in cuts like "This Will Never End" and "Imaginations from the Other Side" sound slightly more fulfilling in their presence, and the mix of the guitars less squeaky and distraught, a factor that was fortunately never enough to entirely curb my enjoyment of the albums in the first place. In other places, though, like "Follow the Blind" the vocals seem a bit wavier in quality, so to hear them so much more to the fore is not necessarily a positive thing. But at least Blind Guardian managed to add SOMETHING to the tracks, so for better or worse, they're not precisely the same.

The problem is that they've pulled off a bit of a 'dick move' reminiscent of Iced Earth's Days of Purgatory collection, where there were different versions available with varying degrees of content. Personally, I'm not fond of this practice, here or in video games or DVD sets or really anywhere. My opposition is not from a pure capitalist standpoint; clearly an individual can discern what he or she is purchasing in advance and make the choice to buy the better product. It just seems arbitrary and wasteful not to give all your fans the same amount of content, or to even waste whatever raw materials are essential to bother printing up separate products when it might save a whole lot of time and effort just to give everyone the full monty. For Memories of a Time to Come, this comes in the form of a third disc incorporated to the 'deluxe super special magnificent elite wonderful' edition, which features 70 additional minutes of content over 15 fucking tracks. Consider that Discs 1 and 2 are only around 51 minutes each, and then realize just how much you'll be screwed if you don't buy the deluxe version...

Obviously, I recommend that anyone who is actually interested in this would buy the fuller, more expensive and expansive version, because who knows if they'll just cave in and make it all available in some later pressing, and there's just so much more bulk to it. Great tracks like "Time What is Time", "A Past and Future Secret", "Lost in the Twilight Hall" and "The Script for My Requiem" are compiled there plus a few rarities like "Brian" from their 1989 live/demo promotional release, or "Dead of the Night" and "Lucifer's Heritage" from their Symphonies of Doom demo when they were actually called Lucifer's Heritage. In fact, that whole demo is here on the extra disc and it's been tweaked. But then, I don't really care for any of those particular cuts, they showcase a much rawer band in which Hansi has only the slightest trace of ability that he would later adapt into renown. The few tracks that Blind Guardian decided to fully re-record for this release were quite surprising. There's a good, heavy version of "The Bard's Song" which I love a lot more than the wimpier, acoustic versions that have long numbered as some of my least favorite content in their whole catalog. Ditto for "And Then There Was Silence".

Does Memories of a Time to Come justify the 30 beans (US) that you'll likely drop for it? That really depends if you have a huge problem with the production of their earlier records. It's not as you're getting a full remix of their discography, but the mix of oldies and from their early speed power metal years and somewhat more recent fare is interesting. A lot of favorites have been omitted like "Journey Through the Dark" and "Time Stands Still (at the Iron Hill)", and I just don't see myself desiring this experience when I could just listen to the originals and experience the full breadth of Somewhere Far Beyond, Nightfall in Middle-Earth, etc. This is a lovely package with a great looking cover, and I do appreciate the fully re-recorded versions, but it just depends how much money you wanna throw at the Germans, and how much you really need to hear the same songs with edited production. If you DO get it, though, don't waste your money on the normal two-disc version, or you'll just regret it.

Verdict: Indifference [5.75/10]

http://www.blind-guardian.com/