If you are only aware of later Sabbath — even still with Ozzy Osbourne as vocalist, in the 70s, or in their relatively recent reunion tours –, it’s likely that this album will surprise you — even if you already know half the songs, such as "Black Sabbath" or "N.I.B.". And why is that? It’s partly because of they way they’re played here, as opposed to how the same band plays them decades later — here they were raw, full of energy and creativity. Here, they were not famous — it was their first album ever, after all –, so they didn’t have fans not to disappoint. Here, they were not an "institution", they didn’t have an established genre. They were not even "heavy metal", since the genre didn’t exist at the time (indeed, to many, including myself, this is the very first metal album ever). They could do whatever they wanted, write the music they felt like playing.

Think you know Sabbath? Then listen to songs from this album such as "Behind the Wall of Sleep", "The Wizard", and, especially, "Warning" (a cover, but whose original version is long forgotten). The latter deserves special attention — mostly instrumental, at times more blues than metal or rock, lasting more than 10 minutes, it includes some of the best jamming by Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler and Bill Ward, and best solos by Iommi, ever recorded, in their more than 30-year career. And that was on their first album. It’s a song that you never get tired of listening to, which you can easily show to a non-metal fan and, unless they’re completely obtuse and believe all music should be simple, radio-friendly, and existing just for dancing to in nightclubs.

This is where metal began — though they didn’t know it at the time.

Oh, and one curiosity: Ozzy’s voice sounds (to my tastes) much better here than on any of his later albums (both with Sabbath and solo). His voice here is intense, powerful and emotional, without any trace of the "whininess" found (sorry, people) in his later works. Did his voice change for the worse after 1968? Did he choose to sing more nasally and at a higher pitch after this album? Questions, questions…

Going back (I reviewed The Dark Saga before) to one of my favorite metal bands (and one of my favorite bands, period), Something Wicked This Way Comes (1998) was the first Iced Earth album I ever bought, back in 1998. At the time, I knew nothing about IE, but the album cover (by Greg Capullo, the main artist on Todd McFarlane’s Spawn comic for years) intrigued me, and at the time I mostly had money to burn, so… why not?

Needless to say, I didn’t ever regret it — both for the band in general, and for that very album, the penultimate (excluding live albums, tributes and compilations) with singer Matt Barlow — that is, until the forthcoming Something Wicked pt. 2 (more on that later).

Like most IE albums, SWTWC is a brilliantly written, very emotional album, with an incredible rhythm guitarist and a fantastic singer (let’s admit it, they never had a bad singer except for the first one). Lyrical themes, oweing to Jon Schaffer’s fascination with history and the dark side of religion, include the Inquisition, pedophile priests ("Father in black, black as sin / Pure hypocrisy to no end"), integrity and independence of thought, a dedication to a friend of Schaffer’s who died in an accident, and a heartfelt "thank you" to the fans. But the best is yet to come…

… it’s the Something Wicked trilogy at the end of the album. A prelude to the Something Wicked pair of albums (yes, it gets a bit confusing), the three songs at the end are, quite possibly (to me, at least), the best thing Schaffer ever wrote (perhaps along with the Gettysburg trilogy a few albums later). The riffs are fast, brutal, and yet complex and perfectly played, Matt Barlow sounds better than ever, and the songwriting is pure brilliance, with middle eastern influences (more pronouned in the later re-recording in the Overture of the Wicked EP, though I prefer the original versions here). The lyrics themselves tell the beginning of a story lasting 10.000 years, which Schaffer had obviously put a lot of thought into, even at the time (years before the Framing Armageddon - Something Wicked pt. 1 album).

If you like epic, dark, emotional metal at all, buy this. Really. It’s Iced Earth at their best (while I still love the more recent albums, and I intend to review them here in the future, I think that the songwriting has lost some complexity and intensity, which this album from 10 years ago had in spades.)

This album, which I’m listening to right now (I’ve never mentioned it before, but all of these posts are written while listening to the album in question, and the present case is no exception), you may be surprised to know, isn’t my favorite album with Bruce Dickinson (here, counting the Iron Maiden ones). It isn’t even my favorite Bruce Dickinson solo album (I’d say The Chemical Wedding is even better). It is, however, simply damn good.

A bit of history: in 1997, when this album was released, Bruce had left Maiden, which had gone on with Blaze Bayley, and its latest albums weren’t very well received. At the time, most people blamed Blaze, though, in my opinion, when he left and Dickinson came back, they went on making exactly the same kind of music as in The X-Factor and Virtual XI. I still like the new Maiden, but their newer albums sound too similar and “muddy” to me. The Number of the Beast, they aren’t.

Meanwhile, Bruce released a couple of strange albums, which, although they had some great songs here and there, revealed a guy who was trying as hard as he could to prove (perhaps most of all to himself?) that he wasn’t “just about metal”. Yes, it’s exactly what Rob Halford did after he left Priest.

Accident of Birth is when Bruce Dickinson stopped pretending to be something he wasn’t. (Hmm, much like Halford’s Resurrection…). When he admitted that, after all, he did love metal, soaring voices, screaming guitars, pounding drums, and all that.

And he joined with two brilliant guitarists: Roy Z (hey, he produced Halford’s Resurrection as well… is this a conspiracy? :)), and Adrian Smith, formerly (and, now, again) of Maiden. The result is this masterpiece.

This is what Maiden would sound like now, if they hadn’t stopped growing musically around 1988. If they still had the passion they had on their first albums. If the albums’ production didn’t drown the vocals like it does (compare Bruce’s voice here to Brave New World, for instance… it almost sounds like a different guy). If Maiden wasn’t an establishment like it is. (Don’t get me wrong, I still love Maiden and buy all their new albums; it’s still great music, but something is gone, IMO.)

The album itself is fantastic. No song begs “skip me”. Nowhere is Bruce’s voice less than perfect, less than passionate, emotional, powerful. Both music and lyrics are brilliant (to be topped only by The Chemical Wedding, in my opinion). This is pure metal without gimmicks: not black, not death, not power, not (yuck) nu. Just metal. What Maiden should be now, and aren’t (even with Dickinson back).

Listen to it as a piece of perfection, and as evidence of what a man can do when he stops trying to run away from himself.

How to describe this album? Well, it’s death metal (in fact, why do you think that genre has that name? Death, the band, existed since 1983!), sure. But not “regular” death metal, to be sure. It has a lot of progressive influences, great vocals (watch out for the greatest cover everof Judas Priest’s “Painkiller”), tempo changes… and quite a lot of melody, too. The songs are incredibly complex - and I don’t mean “complex for death metal”, but “Dream Theater-like”. You won’t believe how many times they change speed, riffs, melody in each song, and, yet, they are songs, they make sense as a whole. It’s something that has to be heard to be believed.

As I mentioned at the beginning, this album also affects me in other ways; for some reason, even at the worst times in my life, listening to it - especially alone, and at a high volume - always makes me feel better. After a couple of minutes, you simply forget your problems and start to listen to the music, being completely absorbed by it. More than possibly any other album, Death’s last and best album demands your full attention. You simply can’t ignore songs like this, or use them as a background sound. And maybe life isn’t that bad when you can get so much joy from music.

What more can anyone add about “The Wall” after all these decades? There are thousands and thousands of reviews out there, some of them brilliant (and some of them even on Amazon.com). Unless you think the album, or Floyd in general, are “pretentious” (a term which I’ve found usually means “too intense” or “too good” - how many times have you seen it applied to, say, Dream Theater?), if you know the album, you probably consider it a masterpiece.

So, were I doing a review, I wouldn’t have much to add. Fortunately, this is not a reviews site.

Unlike some other albums, I didn’t exactly love “The Wall” at first. Some good songs, sure, but also some shorter “interludes”, acoustic pieces, and “silences”. It’s not that I don’t like those, but, to me, for them to work, I have to start thinking about it as “an album” instead of “a collection of songs”. And, yes, “The Wall” is certainly meant to be listened as a single piece, though, of course, some songs also work on their own (like “Comfortably Numb” or “Run Like Hell”).

But, after half a dozen listens, and especially after watching the movie (which is like a video for the album), I really began to “get” it, to understand it, to know the lyrics and the story behind them.

And, yes, it’s a work of art. One of the best of the 20th century. One I can’t seem to get tired of listening to, these days. Sometimes more of an opera than a “rock album”, “The Wall” is personal, emotional, intense, with fantastic lyrics and imagery.

Oh, and watch the movie, too.

I love heavy metal, as any reader of this blog will probably have figured out by now. I also love epic stuff. And I love Tolkien’s books, especially “Lord of the Rings”… and “The Silmarillion” (which was edited by his son, from Tolkien’s notes). Blind Guardian’s 1998 album, “Nightfall in Middle-Earth”, is all of those put together… and the result is a masterpiece that both metal fans and Tolkien fans should worship.

This concept album tells most of the story of “The Silmarillion”, but from individual points of view, instead of “historically” like in the book. You get to “listen” to thoughts and emotions from characters such as Morgoth, Fëanor, and others. It’s also darker, in terms of feelings of despair, than the book - which is already quite “dark” to begin with. The music itself ranges from speed metal pieces to “bardic” ballads, with shorter speaking passages and sound effects between songs, all to tell the story. More than in any other BG album, in NiME choruses are used to great effect, making the music sound incredibly epic and “vast”; this hurt the band a little, in a way, as most of this album is almost unplayable live unless you had a huge chorus. On the other hand, by not limiting themselves to what would be playable live, they created much more than a simple metal album.

Powerful, dark, emotional and sublime, this is epic power metal at its best. However, please, try it out, even if you think metal is “just noise” - you may be surprised.

From “The Curse of Fëanor”:

It’s because of this 1992 album, from Black Sabbath.

By far Black Sabbath’s heaviest and most intense album in their 30-plus year career, it’s also their third (not counting live albums) and last album with Ronnie James Dio, one of my favorite singers, incidentally. Moving away from Sabbath’s usual mystical / occult themes, this is an album about this world, this reality - harsh, uncompromising and brutal, every single second of it. Lyrical themes include the dehumanizing of the world (hence the album’s name), televangelists (one of the world’s worst plagues), individualism, life in prison, over-protecting parents, freedom, and, OK, some fantasy - “After All: The Dead”, a slow but heavy song, which was adapted and used in the PC game “Doom II”.

And the music… many people will disagree, of course, especially those annoying “Ozzy is Sabbath, man!” people, but, to me, Dio is the best singer and lyricist Sabbath ever had, and Tony Iommi and Geezer Butler were never as powerful, musically, as they were on this album - not a touch of commercialism here, not “let’s do a couple of love songs to sell more”. Complex, intricate songs, an onslaught of sound that never lets you rest, never lets go.

To me, the best Sabbath album, and one of the most unfairly underrated albums of all time - fans were expecting “Mob Rules part 2″, and not something as heavy and intense as this. If you want to listen to a heavy metal album that’s brutal yet beautiful, with great lyrics, and some of the best, more influential musicians in the world, you can’t do much better than this.

And wait until you listen to Iommi’s solos on “Too Late” and “I”… they still send shivers down my spine, after all these years.

And what an album it is.

According to Ehren Starks, the album depicts a relationship, which in a way can be seen from the track names, as well as the music itself. Sometimes sad, sometimes joyful, sometimes melancholic. I have to admit my ignorance here, and say that the simple piano/cello combination was completely new to me, and it certainly works very well - I have other albums with just the piano, and it always seems like it’s “missing” something.

I won’t say much more about this album for the moment, other than that I love listening to it, for one reason: it’s not from any mainstream recording company, but from Magnatune, which not only sells albums in a digital format (and, optionally, on CDs) very cheaply, and in normal MP3 or OGG files (that is, no DRM (Digital Rights Management, or, more correctly, Digital Restrictions Management)), but also allows you to listen to all its albums online, through streaming. So you can simply go to its page for The Depths of a Year” and listen to the entire album, to see if it is to your liking. Me, I bought it after I listened to half of it, and it was money very well spent.

By the way, this is one of the few albums I have at work that I can play whenever I want, and nobody complains.

That just doesn’t appeal to me - sounds too much like nagging, complaining, and putting suffering and weakness in a pedestal. I like my lyrics to be inspiring, thoughtful, intelligent.

Then, why do I like Blaze’s Blood and Belief, from 2004, so much - as it is, certainly, a sad album?

Because, you see, my problem isn’t with the “sadness” of an album per se, but with what is usually associated with sad lyrics: the whining, the weakness, the “easy” lyrics, and, most of all, the fact that the music stays, in most cases, stupidly happy - and singing about how you suffer so much to a happy tune sounds, to say the least, false.

But Blaze’s third studio album, while sad, is, above all, introspective. Everything there comes from his personal experience, it’s not just “whining lyrics sell, so let’s make some”. It’s dark, thoughtful, incredibly well written, and honest, too - so honest that it’s almost frightening.

From his experiences with alcoholism, through his own mental problems, through the regret from loss of a loved one - not because she died, but because his mistakes ruined everything -, to his refusal of baseless religion, of petty attacks by music columnists, the album works, indeed, as Blaze Bayley’s “Soundtrack to My Life” - the name of the last song, by the way. Few albums are so brutally honest, so intense, and few albums will make you think as much as this one does.

Years later, I have all of Virgin Steele’s discography, it’s one of my favorite bands, and David DeFeis is, in my opinion, one of the best singers out there - certainly my favorite among the 10 in “Avantasia”. Initially, I thought VS sounded like Manowar… but they’re different, very different. Much more epic, with huge classical influences, and with a lot more keyboards, too. Oh, and thoughtful lyrics, some concept albums, and a passion for Greek mythology. What’s not to love?

Inspired, in part, by the poem of the same name by William Ernest Henley, “Invictus” also continues - and completes - a story Virgin Steele began in “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, part 1″, and which was continued in “part 2″ (although those were not concept albums like Invictus is). It is a story of rebellion and defiance, against uncaring, arrogant gods - epitomized by “the Godhead”:

But, no matter what (and unlike what we usually see in the real world, where people bend over to any kind of authority or threat of force), humanity stands defiant:

Great for when you’re feeling down, too - and completely unlike all the “poor little me, I’m so sad, I suffer so much” lyrics of mainstream music.

This is not my favorite VS album - that’s both parts of “The House of Atreus”, VS’ interprepation of “The Oresteia” -, but it was the first album of theirs I had, and no other album I know means “defiance” as much as this one. Add the great keyboards, drums and vocals, and you get what is, in my opinion, a classic.

1996’s “The Dark Saga”, may or may not be Iced Earth’s best album, but, to me, it’s the most emotional one. They take a comic book which, while good, has its ups and downs, and interpret it in their own way, re-telling parts of the story with music, creating images from sound. If you know the comic, you won’t be able to avoid remembering it, seeing it in your mind, as you listen to this album.

“Spawn” is, basically, the story of a man who dies, and makes a deal with the devil to come back, because he love his wife so much. In return, the devil would have his soul for eternity. The devil accepted… but made him come back not just after his death, but 5 years later. A time when his wife had moved on, and was happy, and married to his own best friend. Not only that, but he didn’t come back in his body, but in a demonic one. Powerful… but also quite inhuman (that’s him, in the album cover, shown above), and scary.

The album begins with “Dark Saga”, an introductionto the story., It then moves through the sadness and profound sense of loss in “I Died For You”, to the brutality of “Violate”… Going through “The Hunter”, about a female angel who came to hunt Spawn, to “Vengeance is Mine”, where Spawn, for the first time, is able to do some good, and put a well-deserved end to a child killer…

… it then ends in “A Question of Heaven”, probably still my favorite Iced Earth song:

Why only now? Well, I have to admit that, without really knowing their music (just “Another Brick in the Wall part 2″, which everyone knows whether they want to or not), I always dismissed them as “just another old rock band”. The fact that I don’t have any friends who are Pink Floyd fans (at least, as far as I know) also contributes to that.

I began to get curious about it when Jeff Minter, a games designer and programmer, mentioned them so much in interviews and blog posts. I admire that guy a lot - if you like video games, you owe it to yourself to play Gridrunner++, at least. So, I thought, if that guy loves that band so much, there just might be something to it.

So I bought several albums, and I’ve been slowly “digesting” them, and so far it’s been a pleasure. Oddly enough, so far, my favorite isn’t “Dark Side of the Moon” or “The Wall”, but, instead, “Animals”, made in 1977.

It’s a relatively short album, with just 5 songs, and the first and last ones are 1:25 short pieces. The middle three are way longer, with fantastic instrumental sections. Relaxing, in a way, but far from being “ballads” or something like that. Intriguing lyrics, too - according to Roger Waters, people are divided between “dogs” (cutthroats), “pigs” (moralists, politicians) and “sheep” (everyone else, who just follow, without thinking). Yet, the lyrics can be quite funny, too:

But my favorite thing about the album is the music itself - even though the 3 main songs range from 10 to 17 minutes in length each, and are quite complex and varied, I find myself whistling as I listen to them.

However, “music” in what way? Well, it won’t be a “music reviews” site. There are already thousands of those.

In it, instead, I will tell stories about how a particular band or album came into my life. What I thought about it then, and how I feel about it now. What I’m listening to at a particular time. What an album means to me. And any music that enters my life, as that (life) should always be a learning experience, and discovering new music, new bands, new experiences, new emotions, is always a pleasure to me.

I hope you find it interesting. If you don’t, I have others.