Quote Originally Posted by grimbold View Post
Sooooo
year end lists?
Probably Auri, Beastland, Return of the Cosmic Men, and Queen of Time were the albums from this year that I will remember the most.

Return of the Cosmic Men is the happiest metal I have ever heard since Sonata Arctica's cover of Still Loving You, and it's actually well made. There are some points where rhymes and assonance completely overtake the songs (Up to the sun / Where love shines bright / The soul of human kind / Diamond in the open skies / Still we are free / So proud to be / Alive in harmony / We've found our way to live in a shining unity) and you expect things to devolve into "she's as nice as apple pie", but it's undeniably exhilarating. Uh oh, that's actually from 2017.

Beastland by Master & Punisher is industrial metal. I can't understand a word, but I really like it, and it's evident that there is a lot beneath the sounds at an intellectual level. Later, it turned out that the author is actually an engineer and sculptor that makes his own machines and equipment. http://www.tristanshone.com/portfolio/trachea-quad-mic/

Auri and Queen of Time are albums that IMO offer a bit too much of the same. I am not fully convinced that Queen of Time is better than Under the Red Cloud, and the songs sound less distinguishable in Queen of Time to me. It is, however, still an undeniably good album. Auri is memorable even just for the first song (The Space Between). I don't think it's really metal, but Holopainen calls it celestial metal, so whatevs.

I had been turned away from Elvellon by descriptions of them as a Nightwish clone, but they objectively aren't that. They don't even try to imitate Holopainen's bombastic approach. I like Until Dawn.

The Blind leading the Blind by 1914 is also good, albeit somewhat too full of materials that aren't part of the songs.

I only could listen to the Psalter Of The Royal Dragon Court once, but it sounded very good.