I have absolutely zero rights to be surprised that this was my top artist, and I'm gonna guess y'all probably aren't too surprised either. Last year my all time favorite band Demon Hunter released a new album, so you'd better believe that I listened to that more than I should have.
The album was honestly everything I could probably want in one of their albums, but instead of sharing a track off of that I'm gonna hit you with an old school track. While they may have a nice polished sound now, back in the day they were just a fantastically harsh sounding band that was really in tune with the sound of the era.
Hope ya like it, Summer Of darkness is one of my favorite albums.
Gonna do a switch up on music for a little bit. For the next few weeks I'm only going to post Christian artists that I find to be actually good.
I feel I have made it very clear that I generally despise Christian media since the whole trend of settling for a slightly lesser product started strong in the 80s and 90s and is only starting to change recently.
One of the criteria I judge by is whether the group is a crossover success into the secular music scene. If a band manages to please both audiences they generally are a really solid act. There's opinion based objections to that rule of course, but all in all it's a solid rule of thumb.
One of the things that can keep a really solid Christian artist from being a solid crossover act is how open they are about their faith. Skillet is a solid example of stradleing the line. Their live shows are very obviously Christian events, but their music is solidly middle of the road enough to give them a fan base that spans both sides of the line rather nicly.
After that a lot of my sentiments are more opinion based, but I'll give you one tomorrow that'll offer a different option.
Band: Demon Hunter
Song: Jesus Wept
Album: Outlive (stylized Ovtlive)
Genre: Metalcore, Groove Metal
So while all this A to Z nonsense went down my all time favorite band dropped yet another amazing album.
So I suppose it was technically released on March 31st, but even with me getting access to it a little early since I helped back the album I wasn't able to get a solid review thrown together for April 5th.
Since my general rule for reviewing an album is keeping within 1 week of release date I'm not gonna review this one fully afterall, but I will tell you that the album is straight up amazing. It takes Extremist, the album previous, and just makes it better.
Every Demon Hunter album has at least one song that grinds and burns itself out in a massive way. Extremist had Death, Storm The Gates Of Hell had the title track, True Defiance had Crucifix, and for this album that song is Jesus Wept. It's just such a wonderful song. When they released it as a single it was such a stark contrast to what had been put out previously. It made me so freaking happy honestly.
I hope you like it. If you don't still check some of the rest of the album, it's a very nice melodic thing. Much more singing than albums past.
OH SHOOT, THEY JUST STRAIGHT UP RELEASED IT ALREADY!
"Wait, Noah, I feel like you may like this group?" Yeah... I apologize for how hyped I am about this album, this is just one of the things I've been looking forward to for a long time now. By a long time I mean about 2 years since that's when the last album was released.
I'm really excited about the direction that Demon Hunter has decided to take. I'm a big fan of all their old stuff, but the fact that they aren't remaining stagnant is really a great thing. Their guitarists keep switching around so I suppose that would really help to keep the sound fresh. That's another thing though, for having so many new guitarists they have really managed to keep a really good central sound to the whole thing. Like this song, all the guitar parts were written by Patrick Judge formerly of The Showdown, but it still has a lot of the DH sound to it.
If this is what they're comfortable releasing so far I can't wait to hear the rest of it next year.
I have a friend at work who tells me about all kinds of Rap and Trap music all the time. For the longest time I thought that was all the music that he listened, but one afternoon I was playing Demon Hunter and he really jammed out to it. Turns out he's a huge fan, especially of the first album. Well here's to you Luis, the song you've consistently requested me to play for ya, haha.
What happens when my favorite band covers one of my other favorite bands songs? Some good stuff, that's what.
I love Demon Hunter, I love Alice In Chains, and I love cover songs, so I'm in a pretty good spot here, amirite?
I really apologize though because I haven't gotten more that 5 hours of sleep the last few nights cause I'm terrible at managing my commitments and time. I'm exhausted and can hardly write this, much less something actually good.
I know I've posted these guys a bit in the past but I think it'd be best to post one of their older songs to symbolize when I first discovered them. Actually when I first got into them I had been given a copy of their newest album along with a mess of songs off of different albums. I didn't know that the newer album was a weird sound and it threw me off a lot when I heard their older material. I didn't like it actually cause it wasn't what I was expecting.
Joke's on me though cause I finally listened to this album and it was amazing. Even if you don't like it I hope you can appreciate the sound of it. I don't know how you'll do that, but that's ok.
Artist: Ryan Clark (Demon Hunter, NYVES)
Genre: Metalcore, Metal, Dark Electronic
I feel like I've made it reasonably clear in past posts that Demon Hunter is one of, if not my favorite, band I've ever heard. Other than maintaining a solid sound despite switching around a decent number of the musicians in the band Ryan is my favorite vocalist second only to Randy Blythe of Lamb Of God.
Ryan's a rather talented fellow though. In addition to being the frontman of both Demon Hunter and NYVES he's a graphic designer. He's designed all the DH album covers and a great many other bands have used him as well (Alice in Chains being one of them.)
I really try not to fan out on members of my favorite bands, but since DH is the group that basically got me into Metal they will always hold a special place in my heart, ya know?
The reason I picked this song is because even though you don't get to hear his screaming style you get to hear his singing in the band that he usually screams in. Enjoy, it's a solid song.
I give you, once again, my favorite band to hear. I feel like some of my favorite stuff I almost never post because I'm afraid of people not liking it.
This song though, this is such a good song. I feel like the only thing that makes Demon Hunter better for me is when they bring other people in to add to their songs. Unfortunately they don't tend to do that too often so I don't get songs like this. Actually thinking of it, this album probably has the most guest appearances of all of their albums.
You know, for a band that I call my favorite I really don't post them too often. I guess I'm trying to avoid over exposure to them for you all, but I still should have posted them more than twice by now.
This is probably the most mellow sounding song on the album when it starts, then it turns into a wonderfully intense moment, but literally only a moment. After that it goes back to the sudo mellow thing going on.
If I'm gonna add another band to my top 3 Demon Hunter claims a position without question. One of my first Metal bands, they are what broke me from Weird Al and Classical Music. Yeah, I hadn't branched too far back in the day.
I own each of their albums, and I helped Kickstart an album that the singer is releasing sometime within the next few weeks, so I could say that I'm a reasonably big fan.
Extremist is DH's newest album so far, and I can happily say that it's continued to keep a solid quality. The World Is A Thorn and True Defiance were a little iffy, but they did grow on my after a little while, so I can be happy.
Let's get into my favorite tracks now, eh?
Death
Artificial Light
What I'm Not
Cross To Bear
Gasoline
The Heart Of A Graveyard
Even if you ignore this album, just listen to What I'm Not and The Heart Of A Graveyard. You'll like the last on at the very least.
As I've said multiply times, Demon Hunter is my all time favorite band.
This track, off of their newest album 'Extremist', is a good example of how their sound has both evolved and stayed the same.
Their new stuff has a lot more singing than the old stuff did, but the screaming is also tighter and the sound has evolved very well with the changing of the band.
For how many guitarists the band has gone through it's actually really cool to hear that they've kept most of the same sound to them.
Happy New Year all! It's been a fun 3 months so far, hasn't it? I feel like the new year should be heralded in by the best of last year though, so let's get to it.
Let's preface this by saying that I'm not really an authority on all music since my primary focus was with metal this year, but I still think this will be a good list.
No let us start in no particular order.
Septicflesh - Titan
I found these guys some time last year and they became my favorite artist for something like a good 6 months, which for anybody familiar with my music tastes you know that's actually a really long time to hold the top spot.
Demon Hunter - Extremist
Demon Hunter is a band that I've loved since I first was introduced to metal. They currently hold the award of "That band I always wonder why I stop listening to them ever" that other bands have had till I listened to them again. These guys are my favorite band ever so far and I think you should give this album a listen, because it's legitimately amazing.
Cannibal Corpse - A Skeletal Domain
You may remember this album gracing the list as my first ever album review. It still holds a place as a really good album and one of the best I heard last year. To be totally fair, I missed a lot of stuff from last year, but this is still good stuff if you like Death Metal.
Whitechapel - Our Endless War
I was on a Whitechapel kick when this album came out, so I got it. It's still Deathcore though and that doesn't appeal to a lot of people. As an album though it's not too bad. Some kinda dumb sounding lyrics, but the music makes up for it.
Alestorm - Sunset on the Golden Age *I was unable to find the full album, so a single song will have to do.
I didn't even realize this was a new album when I bought it last month, but as it turns out this was a really good choice to make. It's a solid Alestorm album and a pretty goof Folk Metal album as well. If you liked the one song I posted before you should listen to this because it's all really good.
Weird Al - Mandatory Fun
I know guys.
"Whoa, Noah likes stuff that's not metal? No, this must be a lie."
"Dude no, he posts crappy rap music all the time too, so you know his taste in music is garbage."
However you may feel about Weird Al I will tell you that he is a genius. This was his last album that will be released he has said so that he can keep up with music better. All singles and such from here on out. As you listen you'll note that he has songs on here that were "in" quite a while ago now, so you can see where he's coming from.
Demon Hunter is straight up my favorite band. When I first got into metal a friend of mine gave me a copy of their cd "The World Is A Thorn" and I wasn't too sure about it, but as I went on in my love affair with metal went on they quickly became my number one band.
While my favorite album is probably "Storm The Gates Of Hell", this album "The Triptych" has the sound that makes me think of their signature sound. Specifically this track seems to sum up what to expect in all of their songs.
Something I really like about them is that the singer Ryan is really really good at transitioning between singing and screaming. This isn't the best example of his transitions but in some he does a very smooth slide from singing to screaming that, if you are a metal vocalist, you know is very impressive.
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