Thunderbolt: Rapidshare, Blogspot, Mediafire

Thunderbolt
Exceptionally good Polish black metal. Their demos draw from a wide variety of influences (I can hear Transilvanian Hunger, early Rotting Christ, Dissection...), resulting in an interesting take on standard black metal tropes, somewhat comparable to Sorcier des Glaces in both sound and intent. Supposedly their albums moved in more of a Marduk-esque black/death direction, but I haven't heard them yet.


Thunderbolt/Kataxu - Black Clouds over Dark Majesty/Roots Thunder (2001, Mediafire)
This one's in 192kbps. If anyone can find a higher bit rate, it would be much appreciated.

I honestly rather enjoy the "monotonous" aspects of the newer Graveland stuff. I think it forces the listener to pay less attention to aesthetic concerns and more to the songwriting/composition. I can definitely see your side of it, though; I didn't particularly care for Spears of Heaven, and none of the albums released between Creed of Iron and Fire Chariot of Destruction particularly grabbed me (admittedly, I didn't investigate them too thoroughly). Cold Winter Blades and Will Stronger Than Death are up there with his classic mid '90s stuff, though. Cold Winter Blades in particular grabbed me with its excellent synthesis of the folky/classical stuff of Lord Wind with the reinvigorated black metal-isms that reared their head from Fire Chariot onwards.

I got the new version of Memory and Destiny in the mail a couple days ago, and after listening to it all the way through a few times, I'd put it up there with the (paltry few, to be sure) black metal classics of the '00s. He balanced out the volume levels a lot more, so you can clearly differentiate what layer of music is doing what. That's not to say he's "brickwalled" it in the mastering process; the output volume is very low (especially for a newer album), and the production is very dynamic-sounding. It actually reminds me a bit of the production overhaul that took place between Altars of Madness and Blessed Are the Sick. He's opened up more layers of counterpoint by adding in new fiddle and synth melodies redolent of the previous Lord Wind release. It also sounds like there might be new layers of guitar as well, but that might just be the clearer production bringing out stuff that was obscured in the original release. This re-recording was outstanding enough to convince me to grab the remastered Creed of Iron.

I got Karajan's Ring cycle almost ten years ago as a birthday present, and it's one of my favorite collections of music to listen to, but I can't really pretend to be a Wagner scholar. My only other Wagner recording is this Tristan und Isolde, which I also really like (it's got Fischer-Dieskau singing and Furtwängler conducting, how could I not?). This recording of Parsifal is on iTunes for five bucks; might be worth downloading the program just for that, since it's like four hours of music and by all accounts appears to be a good recording. I just downloaded it myself, and I'm looking forward to giving it a spin when Asphyx's Embrace the Death winds up.

It seems to be an unfortunate tendency of good bands to have a few turds hanging off the end of their discography. I was just thinking about this while listening to Deströyer 666 today. If they had just dropped off the face of the Earth completely after 2003 (which they appeared to have done until 2009), they would be remembered as one of the few elite quality black metal bands, but now, they're just kind of this boring black/thrash/whatever combo. You go to their shows hoping to hear their classics, but you have to suffer through their new shit while you're at it. The same goes for Absu, Asphyx, Grave, and countless others. Luckily, there's bands like Summoning and the aforementioned Graveland that keep it real throughout their whole discography. One really cool band is Saint Vitus: they put out a real stinker with C.O.D., but they came strong with Die Healing and (after a massive hiatus) Lillie: F-65, both of which were faithful to their back catalog, but also built on their past in a substantial way. Are there any other bands that have made a "comeback" like this? Only one I can think of is Deeds of Flesh after their first album, but they fell back down the shit-slide with their more recent stuff.

Sounds awesome. I've been spinning Creation of a Monolith fairly regularly since I got it from the band a couple years ago. Any chance of reissuing the self-titled at some point?

I'm surprised no one's really brought up this band's connections to Ceremonium yet. I can hear a bit of that band in how their riffs are very multipart-staircase style constructions that go in a lot of different directions. It reminds me of a passage from one of the old Amorphis reviews:

"Black Winter Day", the finest track on this album, follows an intricate riff that if played with fast strum speed would be a heavier black metal song. It takes some of the ideas of tonal movement from the first album and spins them into sprawling but cohesive patterns which move throughout the song, using choreographed phrasing which resolves in several different styles of finality ending up with a song that you follow through its racing convolutions and appreciate.

Obviously, the aesthetic style with this band is a lot different, but I find that the riffs are written in a similarly trellised fashion. I really enjoy it when bands can write songs that go in all sorts of different directions without losing the point and sounding like Dillinger Escape Plan or other such bands. I'm looking forward to hearing what comes of this project.

Interesting, that recording seems to a bit livelier than the one I have, which is a lot more despondent-sounding. Both interpretations are great listens, though.

Just got this in the mail. The packaging could have been more elaborate (I'm thinking something along the lines of that double-disc digipack reissue of the first Crimson Moon album), but the sound itself is great. The Destruction System album actually has a slightly more polished edge to it sonically than Spectrum of Death; they did a really good job finally giving that a proper release. The DVD is about the same quality level as the DVD that came with the reissue of Altars of Madness, no real complaints.

These guys wrote some great music. The songs are constructed similarly to what you can hear on the first Morbid Angel album or the first two Death albums: verse/chorus on the surface, but in actuality moving towards narrative structure. I think they're considered thrash/speed metal by the masses mostly because of their usage of Vio-Lence style gang shouts; apart from that aesthetic quibble, I'd say that they fall squarely within the early death metal camp.