The Benja-man Is Verbose

Previous exposure to this artist/album:   Just a few listens to a few songs in the background.  They sounded pretty cool.  Note:  Just to avoid eyesore, LOVEBITES shall hereafter be known as Lovebites, and other bands that I mention in posts about them will have their names written normally rather than in ALL CAPS. I've mentioned a few times my approach to diving into the well of new music by deciding on a listen by listen basis whether or not to listen to each record three times, and then to decide from there whether it gets thrown into my running list of candidates to consider further for the year-end top-fifteen.  Minus the annual list, my approach to listening to older music is pretty similar.  It's a moot point when I'm reviewing something to write about, because of course I'm going to be listening to it a lot.  But if I were just checking out this band in my free time, would  Awakening From Abyss  get a listen #3 based on how I felt aft...

I can't be the only one who waits until the actual end of the year to finalize the year-end list (and then needs a little time to write it up), right? As previously discussed, 2024 was a great musical year.  So much so that I didn't get to everything.  Here are a few more 2024 records that could have made at least my long-list, had I discovered them in time: ( + = woulda been a top ten candidate) Body Count - Merciless Cemetery Skyline - Nordic Gothic Dawnwalker - The Unknowing + Kalandra - A Frame Of Mind + Kingcrow - Hopium St. Vincent -  All Born Screaming As far as 2025, it was okay.  Even within the admittedly limited sphere of music through which I move, I found a bunch of things that I liked.  Compared to any other year since I started actually writing these things in either 2020 or 2021, * there were a lot of returning candidates this time around.  A few former top-fifteeners and  two  former number-ones released music this y...

I asked a few questions last time about how my relationship with  At The Expense Of Humanity  would evolve, whilst presaging that I probably wouldn't have anything interesting to say about why it is or isn't power metal.  So let's get that part out of the way.  You've got speedy riffs that change notes more than they change keys, and usually a baseline of Helloween-style drumrolls.  Granted, sometimes it skews more towards just plain old metal, including the parts with a Maiden-style mix of galloping riffs and power chords.  The basic chord structure consists almost exclusively of riffs that're versions, maybe a bit simpler, of what you'd hear on an Iced Earth record circa The Dark Saga , which most people would call a power metal record.  So okay, it's not a stretch at all to slot  Expense  in amongst the classics of our little subgenre here, moving on. I think that's actually what I need to explain the dichotomy I'm hearing when I try ...

Previous exposure to this artist/album :  See below I have a bit of a weird relationship with Judicator, in that I first became aware of their existence a few years ago when checking out new music and I clicked with their quirky 2022 record, The Majesty Of Decay.  I learned just enough about the band to know that Majesty was a bit of a departure, thanks in no small part to John Yelland basically becoming the band's sole creative force, whereas main guitarist and bassist Alicia Cordisco (known at the time and credited as Tony) had been pretty much the composer previously, and so this was this big reinvention in trying to write songs without her.  Thing is, I quite enjoyed The Majesty Of Decay  for what it was.  Whereas, I'd also listened to one of Alicia's post-Judicator projects, Project: Roenwolfe, and at least their EP, well, I wasn't mad at it but I didn't really connect with it.  And then the new version of Judicator went on to put out Concord , a recor...

I don't know whether there's universal agreement on how people frame different Zevon "eras," but Mutineer has to be considered late-period, right?  After Learning To Flinch , Zevon was in full wizened-troubadour mode, making less produced music with a few handpicked collaborators from a home studio.  I feel like the four years between the trio of records that ended with Mr. Bad Example and Mutineer seems like a pretty clear place to draw a line.  Whether or not that's the standard understanding, that'll be mine.  Mutineer seems considerably closer to me to the record he'd release five years later than it does to his past work.   (As reader may have gathered, I'm quite familiar with Life'll Kill Ya , whereas really everything except the title track of Mutineer was totally new to me.) Track One:  "Seminole Bingo" Despite the preamble above, I didn't necessarily have the impression of a big stylistic shift when first playing Mutineer ....

There's a moment in "Farewell My Hero" in which everything changes.  What seemed to be one story becomes another, one much greater.  Using nothing but a change in tenses, * Daltor transforms from world's guiding light to martyr.  The way his drawn out death serves a springboard to let the others rise up, is one of those celebrations of the human spirit that you can only... ... okay, no; I cannot keep a proverbial straight face while typing that.  This is some silly-ass shit right here, and I am fundamentally incapable of getting into it.  Return to fucking Sendor ** .  Of all the power metal records with deeply embarrassing lyrics,  The Alliance Of The Kings  is very much one of them.   I don't bounce off all of them quite so hard, though.  It's worth asking what it is about Alliance that keeps me from meeting it halfway.  I mean, this is a series of rambles about power metal, a subgenre in which embrace of goof...