Three Fucking Hundred
For 300 weeks in a row, we have presented a new episode of the Sideshow without fail. That means every week for approximately 5.75 years, you have had at least Nick and Brian providing new album reviews (or end of the year lists). So to celebrate the milestone, we…uh…well…just keep the train rolling.
Reviews:
Dying Fetus – Wrong One to Fuck With (Relapse)
Goatwhore – Vengeful Ascension (Metal Blade)
Wildspeaker – Spreading Adder (Prosthetic)
First Impression:
Tesseract – “Smile” single from Kscope
Goatwhore – Vengeful Ascension
Dying Fetus – Wrong One to Fuck With
Wildspeaker – Spreading Adder
The Sideshow Podcast 
One of my favorite features of the Metal Archives is the “Similar Artists” tab on each band’s page. Dying Fetus’s most similar artist is Suffocation. Suffocation’s most similar artist is Dying Fetus. That seems logical. But the transitive property doesn’t apply to Unleash The Archers. When I was listening to Apex by Unleash The Archers, the band it reminded me the most of is Holy Grail. Since you struggled with dividing 7 by 2 in this episode, I’ll refresh your memory that the transitive property says if a=b and b=c, then a=c. So when I went to the similar artists page on Metal Archives for Unleash the Archers, 3 Inches of Blood is the most similar artist. But Holy Grail is not among the 17 bands listed. When I went to Holy Grail’s similar artist page, 3 Inches of Blood is the second most similar artist. But Unleash the Archers is not among the 18 bands listed. So both Unleash the Archers and Holy Grail are very similar to 3 Inches of Blood but apparently Unleash the Archers and Holy Grail are nothing like each other according to metal archives. Go figure.
And Holy Grail is a band I forget about, so I wouldn’t have thought to make the comparison. Ha ha. I mean, that is definitely a similar artist. Though I don’t think I would have said 3IOB is most similar to UTA. There definitely some similar sounds, especially in 3IOB’s early stuff – and they are both Canadian – but Holy Grail is arguably a better direct comparison.
That’s a feature I don’t use on Metal Archives nearly as much as I should. When I went looking for bands similar to Unleash the Archers on Bandcamp, I went to other people’s collections and found that a vast majority were not solely Power Metal fans…most had collections about as diverse as my own. As cool as that was, it wasn’t really helping what I wanted to do. I did find some other read albums though.
And only one of us couldn’t divide 7…
– Brian
I’ve found a few decent bands by using the “similar artists” feature on metal archives. Most notably I discovered Quo Vadis and Vale of Pnath because they were listed as being similar to Allegaeon. You can have hours of fun digging into the similar artists listed on metal archives. For instance, did you know that the 4 bands most similar to Devin Townsend are the following:
-Devin Townsend Project
-The Devin Townsend Band
-Ocean Machine
-Strapping Young Lad
Who’d have thought!