At Long Lasting Impression
This week marks the return of First Impressions! I know you’re excited…stop trying to hide it. While we may have dropped an album review to fit in the previews, we compensate by playing SEVEN songs this episode! So, it all balances out in the end.
Reviews:
Amorphis – Under the Red Cloud (Nuclear Blast)
Ramming Speed – No Epitaphs (Prosthetic)
Axis – Show Us Your Greed (Good Fight)
First Impressions:
Skyharbor – “Out of Time”, new single out now
Parkway Drive – “Crushed” from Ire out 9/25 from Epitaph
40 Below Summer – “Mangina” from Transmission Infrared out independently on 10/6
Trivium – “Until the World Goes Cold” from Silence in the Snow out 10/2 from Roadrunner
Horrendous – “Sum of All Failures” from Anareta out 10/27 from Dark Descent
Baroness – “Chlorine & Wine” from Purple out 12/18 from Relapse
Amorphis – Under The Red Cloud
Ramming Speed – No Epitaphs
Axis – Show Your Greed
The Sideshow Podcast 
I haven’t listened to the new Amorphis album yet. I’ve been listening to 92 minutes of music from Iron Maiden. And I’m passing on the new Slayer album.
Good idea to play the First Impression songs before the reviews of them, but I sometimes am not able to document my impressions right then and there while I am listening and then those impressions sometimes fade away. But one thing that did stand out is your discussion about Trivium. I may have mentioned this before about Trivium, but since you brought up the idea of Trivium as a starter or gateway band, I need to second that notion. Back about 10 years ago, I didn’t listen to much metal. In fact, I listened to no current metal at that time. I instead spent my time complaining that there wasn’t any good music being made anymore and “they don’t write ’em like they used to” and “in my day…” and so on. For some reason that I’m not entirely sure of, I did get my head out of my ass and actually decided to research what passed for “current” metal music. This was around 2006 and the results of my research led me to four bands, three of which you talked about in the same context: Trivium, Bullet For My Valentine, and Disturbed (the fourth band being Opeth but they are quite different from the other three). The thing that I liked about Trivium in 2006 was exactly the thing that Nick said he didn’t like about them: they sounded like Metallica. I think it is an interesting side note that of all the biggest metal bands in history, Metallica might have the fewest direct imitators. There are hundreds of bands that sound like Led Zeppelin. There must be a thousand of bands that sound like Black Sabbath. There are tons of bands that sound like some form of Slayer, Exodus, and Testament. But to my knowledge there aren’t actually all that many bands that sound like Metallica. Trivium circa 2006 was one of the bands that did sound like Metallica, and for someone who was a Metallica fan looking for new music that sounds like them, Trivium fit the bill. Say what you want about Trivium, but of those three gateway bands, Trivium is the only one that we are all still listening to, or at least still saying we are going to give new music a try from. It seems like we’ve all moved on from Bullet For My Valentine and Disturbed. I haven’t listened to the last two albums from either of those two bands and I don’t have any interest in them at this point. I’m guessing you guys feel the same based on the fact that there wasn’t a review on the podcast that I can recall of for any Disturbed and BFMV albums. But even though Trivium aren’t going to be the next Metallica, I still have confidence that they can craft a few decent radio-friendly songs that will fit in on Sirius/XM Octane (or is it Liquid Metal? I can’t remember because I don’t actually listen to radio).
I agree with your sentiment 100% (obviously), and will only add that we did get the most recent BFMV album as promo and I did give it a listen. My feelings of that echo my feelings of Trivium. It’s not all great, but the stronger songs on it would make for very good radio songs. We most likely won’t end up reviewing that album, but I would say at least 50% of is really quite enjoyable.
-n