The most prominent trend in metal for 1999 (for me) is the prominence of Metalcore.
Here are some of the highlights
Botch- We Are The Romans
Poison The Well- The Opposite of December...A Season of Separation
Cave In- Until Your Heart Stops
Coalesce- 0:12 Revolution In Just Listening
(I'll put Orchid- Chaos Is Me with this group as well)
The most prominent trend in metal for 1999 (for me) is the prominence of Metalcore.
Here are some of the highlights
Botch- We Are The Romans
Poison The Well- The Opposite of December...A Season of Separation
Cave In- Until Your Heart Stops
Coalesce- 0:12 Revolution In Just Listening
(I'll put Orchid- Chaos Is Me with this group as well)
So many good albums this year though. Just ripe.
Perfect! I've always be Metalcore curious! I think I'll check out Cave In first. I lived in Boston back in 1999, and I remember them blowing up & having it on cassette & being impressed. But once I got to med school in Pittsburgh, I totally forgot about them...
Top hard albums for me that year listed would look something like this:
1. Chaos Is Me by Orchid
2. At The Heart of Winter by Immortal
3. Times of Grace by Neurosis
4. The Fragile by Nine Inch Nails
5. We Are The Romans by Botch
6. Still Life by Opeth
7. In The Eyes of God by Today is the Day
8. Crush Kill Destroy by SPAZZ
9. The Aftermath (EP) by Dystopia
10. Live aus Berlin by Rammstein
-----------------------
Just missed top 10:
California by Mr. Bungle
Calculating Infinity by Dillinger Escape Plan
If included all punk and mildly heavy indie rock even pop punk, Blink 182 and Mike Ness and some others may have made it. And some of the weirder and heavier parts of Waits' Mule Variations made me consider being unique and cute and adding that album. As it is, that's my top 10. Orchid's 1999 album is the absolute mutt's nuts! You'll find it fascianting at the very least. And yes The Fragile by NIN is barely even hard rock but there's enough residual industrial metal there that I included it. _________________ -Ryan
“Ususally people are pretty much in agreement with what I’m saying.” -BBF!!!
It was before 9/11. Before COVID. Before the Trump Years when America split into two. Somehow GY!BE felt what was coming. Knew what was in store. How else to explain the symphonic dystopian masterpiece of an EP that is Slow Riot For New Zerø Kanada. It’s mournful. Full of grief. Its despondent weight numbly sinking into a pool of water. Gazing up and witnessing the fracturing of something big. The American Dream sinking into its depths. But first, it burns. Anti-hero man from the streets Blaze Baily gleefully cheering the flames on as he spits out “Things are just gonna get worse and keep on getting worse." And brother, how I wish I could disagree. SRFNZK picked up on the splintering of trust in our society. In one another. That the bond of being fellow citizens, fellow humans was slipping away. We’re all on our own now. And I honestly don’t know how we find the way to see things as one again. But I do know one thing. GS!BE with our man on the street BBF!!! comes the closest to articulating how I feel right now.
The Verdict. One of those albums that changes what you think is even possible for rock music. It’s massive and sweeping and pulls you along on its darkened current of melodious mournful misery. If there’s better music for watching the world slowly burn to I don’t know it.
The Rating: 😈😈😈😈😈
Guess what! That poem by “Blaze Baily” is actually the lyrics from a pretty decent Iron Maiden single "Virus" from the beginnings of the Blaze Bayley era. And it's pretty good!
Guess what! That poem by “Blaze Baily” is actually the lyrics from a pretty decent Iron Maiden single "Virus" from the beginnings of the Blaze Bayley era. And it's pretty good!
So were GY!BE just trolling us?! Does it matter? Probably not. Not to me. Not to my feelings. SRFNZK & BBF!!! hits a nerve any way you slice it.
So naturally I started listening to Blaze Bayley Era Iron Maiden. I started by streaming The X factor, and while I really, really dug the opening track ...
So while I was pining away for the glories days of early 90s Grunge, young'uns like Opeth and vets of the old guard like Bruce Bruce were releasing classic grunge-influenced albums in the late 90s?! 🤬 > Well I guess it's better late than never. I'll try to write this bad boy up along with Opeth's AMAZING Still Life in the near future.
"I had just moved out from my mom’s basically — living on the couch of a friend — when we did Still Life. I was piss poor, really. Didn’t have a future… whatever future I had looked bleak..." - Mikael Åkerfeldt
The Setting: It’s kind of unbelievable. Coming upon this tale and this band all these years later. How could a band this talented, this far ahead of their peers be on the brink of financial ruin. Their visionary stuck between living with his Mom and couch surfing. Not the best odds for one’s romantic prospects to say the least. Still Life is banished from his love for fifteen years? He just didn’t have a proper bed? 🤔 >
The Listen: Maybe it’s better this way. Maybe my kids never would have been born if I had know about this band, this album way back in 1999. Because this is some life changing shit. Rule breaking shit. Especially for the Death Metal scene. I mean this isn't even Death Metal anymore. Not by a long shot. It's sweeping, romantic, melancholic & melodic Alice In Chains meets Mercyful Fate Prog Metal with no real precedent. How did this even happen?!
Let's have Mikael himself explain it...
"I didn’t have much hope then, to be honest, so I figured we’d go all in. I was so immersed in the whole prog rock scene and collecting records at the time we did Still Life, so I figured “let’s go all in” and make this record, see what happens. If it doesn’t, then, take off."
That's what it took. The willingness to block everything else out and just be open to your own inner voice. The willingness not just to be good. To be accepted. But to be great. THAT is what catapulted Opeth to the next level.
The Verdict: What can I say. I haven’t quite discovered a “new” band in eons that could compete with the metal bands of my youth for that special place in my heart. Until this. There is just sooo much going on - Alice In Chains vocal style & ambience, Mercyful Fate plotting, intricately picked & subtle jazz fusion-y riffs. Patience. Riffs. Variety. Repeat. And to think that all this stuff was just floating in Mikal Akaerfelt head as he pined on his roommates couch for his own personal Melissa.
... after dropping my kids off at school this morning. And starting with the very first track, I was properly gobsmacked. Because of all of a sudden WITHOUT Bruce Bruce in the band, Maiden sounded more like Samson WITH Bruce Bruce back in the early '80s. The sound of NWOBHM as it was morphing from '70s Pub Rock & Hard Rock into '80s Trad Metal. As I continued to listen, it totally became clear to me that this was the cogent plan for Virtual XI. To go back to the early days of NWOBHM. And bloody hell, to my ears they pulled it off. And because they actually had a plan and vision for this album, I think it sounds a bit more inspired and original than The X Factor, which to me just sounded like generic Maiden for the most part. And it also makes sense that most Maiden fans in 1999 wouldn't quite get it. I mean unless you're a NWOBHM dweeb like myself it's kind of hard to appreciate that Iron Maiden in 1999 was going for a sound that was almost 1979 Proto-Maiden. Anyways, if you're just as much a fan of early Samson & Saxon as u are of Iron Maiden, I quite recommend it. AND then go check out Samson's Shock Tactics which I also think is stellar & highly underrated.
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