#'80s metal

[bookgeekgrrl]

My media this week (28 Jan-3 Feb 2024)

📚 STUFF I READ 📚

🥰 The Last Devil to Die (Thursday Murder Club #4) (Richard Osman, author; Fiona Shaw, narrator) - still loving the characters, love to hang out with them & Osman's plots move along nicely so you don't get bored at all. Fiona Shaw's narration is great & as a little treat she & Osman have a nice little chat at the end.

🥰 Four Letter Word For Intercourse (bendingsignpost) - 194K, destiel AU - adult college student Dean & professor (and phone sex worker) Cas - LOVE this fic so much & had kind of forgotten about it until it came up as a rec in one of my romance discord servers. Just, so good.

😊 Mrs Sidhu Investigates (Suk Pannu, author; full voice cast) - 2 episodes of the BBC Radio 4 program: #1 Murder with Masala; #2 Mrs Sidhu's Dangerous Highland Game - I prefer the slight changes made for the TV show's characterizations but still eminently enjoyable. (Meera Syal still absolutely rules!)

🥰 Lucky Bounce (Cait Nary) - extremely delightful hockey romance. Low/no angst, charming, cutie MCs. Definitely in the 'no plot, just vibes' category which honestly I love when done skillfully.

💖💖 +102K of shorter fic so shout out to these I really loved 💖💖

Ye Olde YouTube Love Story (Aria_Lerendeair) - The Sandman: Dreamling, 7K - love dreamling human AUs

Any Givens Sundae (dancinbutterfly) - Justified: Boyd/Raylan, 25K - excellently written 'what-if' pinging off a random line of dialogue: what IF Raylan had retired & decided to sell ice cream?

A Warning from Henry the Eighth (Writer_at_the_Table) - "I'm Henry VIII I Am" - Herman's Hermits: , 152 - a villianelle about I'm 'Enry The Eighth by Herman's Hermits - the creativity & cleverness of fan makers truly is boundless

master of a nothing place (strzyga) - Star Trek: Spirk, 6K - short, great fic about Spock going feral when they're trapped on a planet

📺 STUFF I WATCHED 📺

Austin City Limits - Pat Benatar & Neil Giraldo (s49, e9)

Austin City Limits - Duran Duran (s47, e11)

Murdoch Mysteries - s16, e7

Dirty Laundry - s3, e11

D20: Fantasy High: Junior Year - "Under Pressure" (s21, e4)

D20: Adventuring Party - "A Sea of Effluvia" (s16, e4)

Hazbin Hotel - s1, e1

🎧 PODCASTS 🎧

What Next: TBD - Why Is Everybody Sick?

Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly - Cannabis Marketing

⭐ The Sporkful - Why Hibachi Gets Complicated

The Atlas Obscura Podcast - The Guerrero

How To! - How To Be Free Of Body Shame

⭐ The Atlas Obscura Podcast - Hello From The Otter Side

The Allusionist - 188. Lipread

The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week - Nature's Weirdest Sleepers, Iron Maiden Myths, Parking Psychology

⭐ Today, Explained - Living in Zyn

It's Been a Minute - Ayesha Rascoe on 'HBCU Made' — and some good old college memories

⭐ Switched on Pop - The b*tch of loving musical theater (with Bridger Winegar)

99% Invisible #568 - Don't Forget to Remember

⭐ Vibe Check - You’ve Got Mouth Bangs, Girl

I Said No Gifts! - Lou Wilson Disobeys Bridger

Well, Now - How ER Taught Thousands Of Viewers About Cervical Cancer

Off Menu - Ep 220: Peter Capaldi

Films To Be Buried With - Kyle MacLachlan

The Atlas Obscura Podcast - Seeking The (Minnesota-shaped) Forest Through The Trees - Part 1 & 2

Welcome to Night Vale #241 - He Is Still Holding a Knife

I Said No Gifts! - Zac Oyama Disobeys Bridger

Dear Prudence - Am I a Bigot If I Don’t Want to Date Foreigners? Help!

What Next: TBD - The Taylor Swift Deepfake Saga

It's Been a Minute - Charlamagne tha Pundit?; plus, was Tony Soprano white?

⭐ All Songs Considered - Why we still love Green Day

Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly - The Marketing of Taylor Swift: (Taylor's Version)

Consider This from NPR - Masturbation Abstinence Is Popular, And Doctors Are Worried

⭐ You're Dead to Me - Madam C.J. Walker

🎶 MUSIC 🎶

Pop Radio • Romance

'80s Metal

The Cars Radio • Pump-up

Psychobilly Swing

Rock Mix • Party

Presenting Iron Maiden

[mywifeleftme]

44: Fates Warning // Perfect Symmetry

Perfect Symmetry Fates Warning 1989, Metal Blade (Bandcamp)

As a teenager I almost certainly would’ve called prog metal or thrash my favourite genre of music, and I spent a lot of time listening to icily produced chops demonstrations in the vein of Fates Warning’s Perfect Symmetry (though, even as a head, I never cared much for this record in particular). I’ll pause here to play a game of Remember Some Guys.

Remember Some Guys (Prog Metal Edition)

Remember Watchtower?

Remember Anacrusis?

Remember Mekong Delta?

Remember Crimson Glory?

Remember Flotsam & Jetsam?

Remember Thought Industry?

I remember those guys! Anyway, Fates Warning at one time were considered one of the “Big Three” of ‘80s/‘90s prog metal, alongside Queensrÿche and Dream Theater, but the years have rendered them much more of a cult act (see: FW’s 26,000 Spotify listeners versus over a million each for DT and the ‘Ryche). I can think of a couple of reasons for this. Their early albums sound like straight up and down ‘80s traditional metal, if a group of guys had broken all its limbs with a set of golf clubs. The songs have huge, starry-eyed choruses, flashy solos, and some timeless riffs, but they jerk around at odd angles, thwarting the simple headbanger who just wants to gallop. As they moved through the ‘80s and ‘90s they reinvented themselves multiple times as first ur-technical Guitar Center porn (see: Perfect Symmetry), then mellow Queensrÿche-adjacent crossover hopefuls, and finally into a darker-hued sound influenced by latter-day King Crimson, Tool, and Peter Gabriel. A lot of their back catalogue is actually pretty good, but this restlessness (and leader Jim Matheos’ increasing taste for grey moods and flat melodies) soon saw them fall behind their peers in sales and influence.

Back to Perfect Symmetry. As you’ve probably gathered, I think this album sucks. Even when they were singing about giants and sorceresses, ‘80s Fates Warning never met a simple pleasure they weren’t compelled to complicate with bonkers time signature and tempo shifts. Sometimes those bait and switches and hairpin turns could be thrilling, as on the thrash-influenced numbers on No Exit, their previous album. Here though, you can practically see the band screwing up their faces (and their songs) into expressions of intense, tortured profundity. Everything fun about the band goes out the window in favour of plodding tempos, groaning pseudo-philosophy (sample: “Men of grandeur / blinding, numbing / with winsome wiles in specious styles”), and pointlessly busy playing that sounds like they arranged it using a circuit diagram. This also was not a good look for vocalist Ray Alder, who often gambles with the key when he shouldn’t.

I picked this album out of a dollar bin a few years ago out of old loyalty to the band and, given that it now fetches a decent little sum, I’m sure I’ll part with it eventually. But I’ll close with some words of praise for a band I’ve enjoyed a lot over the years: after Perfect Symmetry, Fates got this particular bug out of their system, and they never really returned to this style. Matheos in particular had a cool renaissance in the 2000s, and I’m very fond of his collaborations with Chroma Key’s Kevin Moore as OSI and his initial reunion with original Fates vocalist John Arch in 2003. Eh, in a 40-year career, they won’t all be winners right?

44/365

[evan-collins90]

Georgie Porgie's Ice Cream Parlor - Westport, CT (1987?)

Designed by Arnold Kaye

Scanned from a 1988 issue of Contract Interiors Magazine & the book, Food Presentation & Display (1992)

[pencilscratchins]

i have reached the part of the steddie hyperfixation where i make them domesticated men in their 50s. having a blast! (twitter) [ID in ALT text]

[tojis-wife3]

[girlthatyoufear]

[n7crophiliac]

metal on cassettes ⚔️.

bathory - bathory (1984)

slayer - hell awaits (1985)

megadeth - so far, so good…so what! (1988)

anthrax - fistful of metal (1984)

death - scream bloody gore (1987)

sepultura - morbid visions / bestial devastation (1986)

metal church - metal church (1984)

iron angel - hellish crossfire (1985)

dark angel - darkness descends (1986)

venom - black metal (1980)

[metallicaslut]

when the video isn't three pixels and fried audio 😫

[fallen-starchild]

don’t forget to kiss the homies <3

[aplaceforyourhearttorest]

march 5th, 1983 ♡

[bisclavaret]

Never leave your tummy vulnerable to attack

[bookgeekgrrl]

My media this week (10-16 Sep 2023)

📚 STUFF I READ 📚

🥰 'Til The End Of Time (fandomfluffandfuck) - 66k, stucky, basically PWP with stucky + pre-war bucky (due to multiverse/time slip shenanigans) [reread, fave, really quality filth 🥵]

😊 Rapidly Becoming (Ayes) - 67K, drarry, immediately post war, Draco goes missing & Harry inheirits Malfoy Manor - enjoyable, I'm always a sucker for a magical house story

😍 Ain't No Grave (Can Keep My Body Down) Podfic (GhostCwtch, narrator; spitandvinegar, author) - 107K (14 hr podfic) - well done podfic of a forever fave post-WS recovery fic

🥰 A Fire at the Exhibition (Lady Hardcastle Mysteries #10) (T.E. Kinsey, author; Elizabeth Knowelden, narrator) - Emily & Flo contend with the village art exhibition, theft, murder, bicycle races and amateur treasure hunters. 🥰 The Uses of Adversity (MonstrousRegiment) - 65K, Dreamling, very entertaining canon-divergent AU where Hob accidentally becomes a criminal mastermind (sort of) and finds & rescues Dream in 1957

💖💖 +143K of shorter fic so shout out to these I really loved 💖💖

A Cornstalk Fiddle (notbecauseofvictories) - Devil Went Down to Georgia (Song): The Devil/Johnny, 32K - brilliant short story about what happened after - Johnny won once and he thinks he can do it again to get what he wants...

You've Got A Face With A View (Brenda) - Top Gun: Ice/Mav, 3K - it's 30 years into their relationship & Mav's still wild about his hotass husband and is going to tell and show him why and how.

📺 STUFF I WATCHED 📺

Maine Cabin Masters - s6, e2-8

Harley Quinn - s4, e10

Only Murders In The Building - s3, e7

Dirty Laundry - s3, e1

D20: Mentopolis - "Case Closed" (s1, e6)

D20: Adventuring Party - "Bit City USA" (s14, e6)

🎧 PODCASTS 🎧

Re: Dracula - September 10: Make Yourself Strong

The Atlas Obscura Podcast - Fenway Victory Gardens

Re: Dracula - September 11: Grim Purpose in All I Do

Today, Explained - Hunter becomes the hunted

Into It - Is Rotten Tomatoes…Rotten?

Re: Dracula - September 12: The Pain of the Fear of Sleep

Pop Culture Happy Hour - Jimmy Fallon And Strike Force Five

The Atlas Obscura Podcast - Bridget Cleary

Vibe Check - Pumpkin Spice is Not My Ministry

Re: Dracula - September 13: All the Powers of the Devils

The Atlas Obscura Podcast - Onöhsagwë:de’ Cultural Center

⭐ 99% Invisible #552 - Blood in the Machine

⭐ Switched on Pop - Next Year in Margaritaville

The Atlas Obscura Podcast - The Atomic Clock

Dear Prudence - My Partner’s Relationship With His Ex Makes Me Feel Like the Third Wheel. Help!

Into It - The Backlash to Drew Barrymore

⭐ Endless Thread - Lofi Girl

Today, Explained - Blame Capitalism: Profit over everything

Welcome to Night Vale #234 - The Boy

⭐ Hit Parade - Insert Lyrics Here Edition

🎶 MUSIC 🎶

True Metal Warriors

'80s Metal

Ozzy Osbourne

Judas Priest

Jimmy Buffett

Presenting Nine Inch Nails

Lord Of The Lost

Peaceful Summer Night 🌃 Night Lofi Playlist 🌃 Deep Focus To Study/Work [ Lofi Hip Hop - Lofi Chill ]

Lost Legends Of Surf Guitar

Herb Alpert

[mywifeleftme]

200: Mercyful Fate // Don't Break the Oath

Don't Break the Oath Mercyful Fate 1984, Roadrunner

Before I started this series, I hadn’t reviewed a record in nearly ten years. I specialized in metal, and these days I have only a handful of metal albums in my physical collection, so it’s rare that I pull an album off the shelf that I’ve meaningfully written about before. But I did cover Mercyful Fate’s Don’t Break the Oath in my previous life, and my feelings about it haven’t changed. So, here’s an old slab of demon wax for Halloween, lightly edited for grammar.

If you want to really love Mercyful Fate, and God is it rewarding to do so, you have to be kinda willing to just “go with it.” When you hear Fate for the first time, you can’t help but notice how ridiculous King Diamond’s voice is, and often people find it so distracting that they never really give the band a chance. I liken it to watching old horror movies: yeah, they’re dated and you can see the wires, and the things that scared people then seem trite and funny now, but on the other hand, the way they use the tools at hand to craft their vision often results in a unique aesthetic. The ridiculousness is part of the appeal, sure, but you also have to be willing to let yourself accept these things on their own terms.

Look, anyone who tells you the King’s voice is “badass” probably isn’t really thinking about what they’re saying; when you’re listening to Diamond’s spindly wail on “Night of the Unborn,” you’re not sitting there going, “Man, a guy with that voice could probably kick the shit out of me.” I always felt like he was a really earnest guy who wanted very badly to be able to scream like Rob Halford but could only approach those high notes through a rather willowy falsetto. So, he found a way to use the things he had (strangeness and creativity) to become one of the great metal vocalists. His skewed-operatic sense of melody and (at the time uncommon in metal) willingness and ability to master multi-tracking techniques have few peers in the genre to this day. In 1984, you’d have had to look outside the metal genre to find vocal multi-tracking on a par with what Diamond does on "The Oath" and "Come to the Sabbath." He’s utilizing his voice as an instrument, coming up with these elaborate, off-the-wall vocal melodies (only John Arch of Fates Warning was nearly as original, and you can bet Diamond was a big influence), trying on weird effects, and ultimately matching note for note the decadence of the instrumental performances. Again, the fact that the guy probably thought this kooky shit was legitimately scary or occult is irrelevant. What he’s actually doing is just, for whatever reason, really fucking awesome.

It helped that he had maybe metal's baddest band laying down the music. Denner and Shermann’s riffs brand your ears while putting on a “how to solo the metal way” clinic (see “Gypsy” for both), and the underrated rhythm section of Hansen and Ruzz consistently find that perfect balance between technique and groove. As much as I love Judas Priest, the more I listen to Don’t Break the Oath, the more I realize how thoroughly Mercyful Fate beat them at their own game. It’s like if some rookie did one of those ridiculous LeBron James-style full-court chasedown blocks on LeBron, and then posterized him with a dunk at the other end of the court. Maybe Priest were hampered by recording technology and the burden of inventing a new style, but it’s only fair that someone else ended up delivering the definitive statement of that style. After all, Priest had pretty much done to Deep Purple what Mercyful Fate then did to them. “Night of the Unborn” is K.K. Downing sublimed, and on album-highlight “A Dangerous Meeting” you can hear that trebly, hot rod "Exciter" template finally reach the sustained heat it always aspired to. Listen in relative awe as the midsection of “Welcome Princes of Hell” thoroughly trumps “You’ve Got Another Thing Coming.” Songs like “Come to the Sabbath” and “The Oath” frequently find themselves inside the most intense, “Dissident Aggressor”-type moments Priest could only sustain for brief passages; Fate sounded like they’d be comfortable living there.

The scary thing is the way they kind of toss off little ideas which show that, had they wanted to, they could’ve absolutely owned virtually any other contemporary metal band’s style as easily as they did Judas Priest’s. The rolling, groovy riffage of “Desecration of Souls” just about out-Savatages Savatage, and you know Dave Mustaine ripped off the coda to “Come to the Sabbath” coda for approximately half of the breakdown riffs on Megadeth’s first four albums. Their ability to seamlessly integrate heavy prog riff transitions and rhythms makes even classic Fates Warning sound clumsy by comparison. And the folky mellow guitar riffs at the beginning of “To One Far Away”? Tell me that doesn’t sound like the origin of Opeth. I find myself staring into the cover art* while I listen to the record, and it seems like it perfectly represents what Don’t Break the Oath is all about. You do what I used to do when I was 15 and spread out all your metal CDs [2023 edit: LPs] on your floor and it’ll immediately catch your eye, that strikingly yellow square amongst all the blacks and blues. If other metal albums are burnt offerings to the Devil, then this sacrifice is one that stills burns, constantly burns. There’s no album quite like it. It’s IIIIIIIIIN THE NAME OF SAAAATAAAAANNN, it’s Don’t Break the Fucking Oath, and it’s the best metal album ever.

* By the way, am I the only one who thought the Melissa cover art was an abstract painting of blood dripping sideways because the skull face was so dim?

200/365

[venustriste]

[duffsvelvet]

[stubberudsgirl]

Quorthon of Bathory