I moved my Recommended Listening posts off the front page for the benefit of anybody who might be reading and doesn’t care about what music I’m listening to or what I think about Kreator’s latest album.
If you DO care to read such things, you can find them here: http://www.rhyandjay.com/category/music/ or through the ‘Recommended Listening’ link under categories.
I’m thinking I may introduce a top menu for such things fairly soon, too.
Think that's gross, you should see the "Revisited" version
I’ll be the first to tell you I have an unnatural obsession with thrash metal, but this album stands out for me. Kreator is a band that somehow never caught my attention until very recently. Having recently listened to a couple of their older albums, I suppose I can see why. Back in the 80′s, they were just one of many many thrash metal bands, and their stuff sounds pretty similar to early Exodus, really early Anthrax, etc… (not to mention the fact that ‘Kreator’ is one of the dumbest band names ever–I assume they were a Christian metal band for a long time) …but much like Exodus (another terrible band name), it seems the dark days of the 90′s did these guys good.
It’s not ground-breaking or anything, but it’s damn fine thrash metal. And to have a band that started out in 1982 making kick-ass thrash metal in 2005 is, in and of itself, impressive.
The one downside to the album is probably the vocals. This is a German band after all. Especially on earlier Kreator albums, the vocals can be a bit difficult to swallow. In the case of Enemy Of God, though, they seemed to have found a way to blend the vocals with the music in a way as to not sound like a dying animal.
Kreator recently released a new album, Hordes Of Chaos, which is also pretty awesome. And apparently their current style revival began in 2001 with Violent Revolution, which I’ve yet to hear.
Jabberwocky, obviously, was fun to listen to, but I had every live recording and every rehearsal recording in there and I just couldn’t make it through all that stuff. I listened to two rehearsals and then moved it all over to the live music archive and just listened to the Live compilation and The Lundo Sessions.
I had thought that listening to a bunch of Jabberwocky would be really fun and nostalgic and it was for a while, but eventually all I heard were the out-of-tune guitars, my own failed attempts at vocal harmony, and lack of polish on the production. Still love the songs, though.
After Jabberwocky, I had Jethro Tull’s Thick As A Brick, which was my second listen through, and I’m still impressed at how what is essentially one long song doesn’t get boring to listen to even after 45 minutes.
Then it was Jimi Hendrix, Johnny Cash, and Judas Priest.
At one point in my life, I was thoroughly enthralled with Jimi Hendrix. And for good reason. But listening through those three albums this time was just kind of annoying. Not so annoying that I got rid of them, but still annoying. Especially all of the hard-panning in a lot of the songs. I’m sure most of this was due to my mood, but I really didn’t get much enjoyment out of these albums this time around.
Johnny Cash took up my entire afternoon yesterday. I listened through all of the American Recordings albums. All of the older Cash I have exist in decade compilations (50′s, 60′s, 70′s) which I’ll listen to later. It worked out well, because as it turned out, country music was about perfect yesterday.
And then this morning I found myself looking at four Judas Priest albums and realized I had no desire whatsoever to sit through that. Upon examining the albums, I found that British Steel was the only one that was really needed. The rest only had one or two songs each that I wanted, so I relegated them to the decade compilations and filed them for later listening. British Steel, as it turns out, is a damn fine album and after listening to it, I understand why I held on to those other albums for as long as I did.
Also, I’m a bit ashamed to say, during this process, I deleted three John Coltrane albums. My theory is that I only listen to jazz when I specifically want to hear jazz, and since I have no education in jazz and usually just want to hear an awesome drum solo or something, I’ll probably just listen to jazz radio when that situation comes up in the future. No reason to clutter my iTunes with it. I’m sure I’ll change my mind later and want every jazz album every made, but whatever. Things are so easy to find nowadays anyway.
And now: The K’s.
Oh hell yes.