Thankfully, I managed to sleep a good bit on the flight, and was reasonably alive when we landed in Athens. It was the first time I’ve ever been out of the U.S., so I was pretty excited. Another difference (and a very nice one) from normal travel presented itself. We had no idea where we were going, and didn’t care. All we had to do was find the guy from the promotion company (Jim Morris says it’s always the “same” guy, no matter what country he’s in), and everything would be taken care of. He found us, and got us in cabs and on our way. We made it to our hotel eventually. On the way, I got my first taste of Athens traffic. I’m from Chicago, where plenty of people drive like maniacs, but it’s nothing compared to Athens. Just before the hotel, four guys got out of a truck in front of us trying to make it up the street, picked up a car, and moved it out of the way so they could get by. And the cabbie said we hadn’t seen anything yet.

Our hotel was in a great spot, basically right under the Acropolis. We had a nice dinner right next to the hotel. Earlier, Jon’s dad (who is a pharmacist) went into a pharmacy across the street to talk shop, and find out what kind of differences there were between the U.S. and Greece. Within five minutes, he’d gotten into a big argument. It quickly became obvious where Jon gets some of his fire from. That night, we all walked around the Plaka (the old town area with lots of shops and restaurants) and scoped out some bootleg Iced Earth merchandise among other stuff. I walked into a record shop, and for the first time, realized that I was in Europe, where there would be all sorts of CDs I normally wouldn’t see in the U.S. I got Misanthrope’s Libertine Humiliations (a very fine CD!)

I was lucky enough to travel to Greece with Iced Earth in early 1999, when they recorded their live album, “Alive in Athens”. I had the opportunity to see two of the best heavy metal shows imaginable, and after that, to just hang out with Iced Earth on a “vacation”. This is my journal from that trip.

My travel started on the evening of the January 19th, as I drove down to Franklin, Indiana from the Chicago area. I narrowly avoided a 5 vehicle accident on the way down, so things were already off to a “metal” start. I got down to the house where Matt, Jimmy, and Brent were staying at about 11:30. I met Jimmy’s two snakes (one small, one giant), hung out, and listened to some tunes.

The next morning, we headed out to the airport at about 9. I quickly learned that flying with a band is a bit different than flying on business, or for a simple vacation. First, there were twelve of us in our party at that time, and we had all of the band’s equipment with us. I’m not sure how long it took us all to get checked in, but it was at least an hour, and the line grew from 0 to at least 50 people before we cleared out of there. We probably didn’t make a lot of new Iced Earth fans then! By using everyone’s baggage allowances, and some creative packaging (like completely wrapping two guitars together in duct tape so they’d count as one), we managed to get everything on to the planes. The guys then went to a hat shop there to pick up some hats before leaving (an Iced Earth tradition, apparently). Even though everyone went to the airport together, we were actually on two different flights. The band and some others would be going to Thessaloniki first, while the group I was in (me, Jon’s dad Tom, and friends John and Jeanna) was headed straight to Athens. We finally got on the plane, leaving Indianapolis, and flew all the way to……

…….Cincinatti. Yep, this was going to take a little while. After a bit of a layover, we got on another plane, and this time made it all the way to JFK in New York. The wonderful directions given to us for the Olympic Airlines terminal took us on a fun bus ride around the entire airport, and nearly right back to where we started. Well, I’m from Chicago, I’m not supposed to like New York anyway. Finally, we made it to the Olympic terminal, where it was my job to find Jim Morris, who would be producing the live album. He came up from Tampa, and had a much easier time of it than we did. I spotted him, and introduced myself and the rest of our group. I quickly found out that he’s an even bigger computer geek than I am, and we proceeded to talk technical for a while. I got to know him a lot better on the rest of the trip, finding out what a complete goofball and very cool guy he is.

At about 7PM, we loaded onto the 747, and left for Athens. Unless you enjoy a very hot and dry plane, unfriendly flight attendants, and announcements that you can’t understand even when they’re in English, I don’t recommend Olympic Airlines. Sometime during those ten hours in the air, we crossed into the next day, and Europe.

I’ll post my best-of-1998 list. Oh, ok, it’s actually my “all-of-1998? list, since it’s more fun that way. I have these arranged somewhat in order, (with my favorites at the top), but it’s definitely not exact. I’d say everything could move at least five places in eitherd irection and still fit right.

Overall, it was a very interesting year. There was a huge amount of releases, and many from my favorite bands, but it seems like few of the ones that I was expecting to blow me away succeeded in that task. Instead, newer and unknown bands took some of the top spots.

So, with no further ado, here they are:

Covenant – Nexus Polaris:
They aren’t black metal, and that’s why it’s so good. This is what I’ve always wanted black metal to sound like. Great songs, great keys, great drums, and I even really like the vocals, Popeye and all.

Amon Amarth – Once Sent From the Golden Hall:
The anti-Blind Guardian. Yeah, of course they sound nothing like Blind Guardian, but this album proves that all you need is two guitars, bass, drums, vocals, and eight tracks to make an epic masterpiece. I was totally surprised at how much I liked this one.

Sentenced – Frozen:
Probably ended up with the best (expectation) x (actual quality) product of any album I got this year. With a string of excellent albums behind them, of course I expected another great one. I think I like it more than Down now. It might not be as heavy, but it’s got tons of punch. Ville quickly rocketed up as one of my favorite singers.

Night In Gales – Thunderbeast:
Night in Gales grows up. I enjoyed their first album, but they actually sound like professionals on this one. It’s got a great, powerful sound, and Bjorn’s highly varied vocals really stand out. And I love the crazy non-sensical lyrics too, they add some weird mystical tone to the album for me.

Cryhavoc – Sweetbriers:
If you mourn over the post-Amok softening of Sentenced, dry your tears and get this album. It’s totally shameless Sentenced-worship, somewhere around the Amok/Love and Death era. The cool thing is, since it’s such a pure ripoff, it’s just as excellent as the real thing.

Evereve – Stormbirds:
This one did some serious growing on me, over a period of at least 6 months. It just keeps getting better and better. It’s pretty original gothic/death/black metal, with all sorts of different songs. The singing is extremely varied, as are the lyrics which come in three different lanugages.

Iron Maiden – Virtual XI:
(ducking). I’m always completely baffled at how people like Hammerfall so much, and I guess this is where the tables are probably turned….you all think, “what kind of idiot is that guy?” Well, simply put, this album rules. My favorite Maiden album, along with The X Factor (ducking again). I still can’t figure out what people can’t stand about this album, if they like any other Maiden albums.

Rage – XIII:
Rage maintains their hold as my favorite band with this one. Another change, another great album. There’s an orchestra on every song, but they never hit you over the head with it. It just serves as a background and creates an extremely lush texture for the whole album. Peavy just rules.

Iced Earth – Something Wicked This Way Comes:
This one is a little hard for me to judge for some reason. Maybe it’s because I listened to a pre-release tape of it constantly for a month. Anyway, I think I really like it, it’s definitely better than the Dark Saga, but due to my early saturation, I don’t find myself listening to it all that much. Every time I do though, it kicks ass.

Einherjer – Odin Owns Ye All:
Hooray for Viking metal! The cool thing about this album is that that’s as much classification as you can give it. The style is very unique, it’s pretty much just “metal”, but it has some very creative song structures and crazy rhythms going constantly. Couple that with the melodies and the epic moods, and you’ve got a kickass album.

Grave Digger – Knights of the Cross:
I call these guys Blind Guardian Junior now. That might not be the best name, since it implies the BG is the master and they’re the student. What I really mean is that they do everything that BG does, but to a lesser extreme. Which can make it better, since it sticks more to pure, simple metal. I’m looking forward to the third album in this concept-album series.

Therion – Vovin:
I can find a lot more similarities between Lepaca Kliffoth and Theli than I can between Theli and this one. I don’t know what that means, I’m just letting people know. So it’s a lot different than Theli, but I think I like it about the same. It’s great chillin’ music (except for that Scheepers character).

Waylander – Reawakening Pride Once Lost:
This is some really cool Irish folk death/black metal. Sort of like Skyclad, except with black vocals, and a flute in place of the fiddle. It gets really fast and thrashy at times, while maintaining great melodies. This is one of those rare Century Media discs that’s only available as an import.

Helloween – Better Than Raw:
This one looks like a masterpiece on paper. Really damn heavy, fresh, and original, it should have it all. But somehow it hasn’t hit me quite as well as I thought it would. Maybe I’m looking for a little more melody. Like all Helloween albums, the songs vary a lot, so you get some really incredible ones, and then some throwaways.

Angra – Fireworks:
Well, it’s no Holy Land, but it’s still some really good power metal. Andre Matos is still a big wuss, but that’s ok. The guitars just control this album. They’re everywhere and they’re very nice.

Arch Enemy – Stigmata:
This is one of those rare ones my brother got before me. Of course, he neglected to tell me that it was any good. Maybe that was because of the vocalist, who a lot of people don’t like, but I don’t have much of a problem with. A good solid melodic-death metal album that didn’t get completely molded into the Studio Fredman form. Not as good as Armageddon though.

Opeth – My Arms, Your Hearse:
Yep, here’s Opeth, all the way down here. Like JP, Morningrise is probably my favorite album ever, and, well, this one just hasn’t done it for me. The fact that it says Opeth on the cover probably makes it even worse for me. I know that’s stupid, but hey, that’s just how it is. It’s got some really excellent stuff, but it just hasn’t hit me as an album yet (and it’s getting a little late now).

Blind Guardian – Nightfall in Middle Earth:
Another heavy hitter finds the middle of the pack. If they would have gotten rid of all the odd-numbered tracks, and a few of the even ones as well, they’d have really had something. As some have said, the album is amazing if you devote your entire attention to it, but I just don’t have time for that anymore. Maybe I’ll like it more when I’m retired.

Savatage – The Wake of Magellan:
Yeah, I guess this came out this year? Nice and heavy, so that’s cool, but I don’t like all of the songs like I did on DWD. It starts and finsihes excellently, but the middle gets a little tiresome for me. Savatage was one of the best shows I saw this year though.

Children of Bodom – Something Wild:
This seems pretty good, but for some reason, I’ve hardly listened to it, and can’t really say too much about it.

Dan Swano – Moontower:
Dan Swano’s cool, but I don’t think I’m into his stuff quite as much as some other people. It’s definitely an interesting piece of work, and it keeps getting better.

Fear Factory – Obsolete:
Probably not as good as Demanufacture, but still a darn good album. Burton C. Bell just rules, and he actually sings HIGH on this album. The three “laid back” songs on this one are amazing, but I don’t know if I like them because they’re more laid back, or just because they’re better songs.

Samael – Exodus:
Pretty much continues in the vein of the excellent Passage, to tide us over ’til the next one. And at like 35 minutes, it’s pretty good for tiding over. They’re definitely a unique band right now.

Death – The Sound of Perseverance:
Cool disc. Death has always been at the edge of the cusp for me, and they kind of remain there with this album. Intellectually, they seem excellent, but they never quite “hit” me.

Silent Scream – Bow Down and Pray:
A German band produced by Iced Earth’s Jon Schaffer. They’re pretty much AJFA-era Metallica, with a bit more power metal. Maybe I like this so much because I don’t own any Metallica.

Liquid Tension Experiment – Liquid Tension Experiment:
I’m pretty surprised how much I like this one. Maybe because it’s not wussy like I expected it to be. I mean, there’s some crappy parts, but overall, the cool parts win the battle. Screw vocals!

Anathema – Alternative 4:
I got this one on a whim after I heard JP and some other people were talking about it, and I felt like I needed something different. And it turned out to be pretty good. Not really metal, and no, it’s not alternative, but it’s got good melodies and a great atmosphere.

Dimmu Borgir – Godless Savage Garden:
I was a bit underwhelmed by this one. I got it soon after finally recognizing how cool ETD is, but this isn’t quite as cool. I only really like the second of the new songs. The Accept cover is cool, but the live tracks are nothing special, except for the talking between them. (“I pour this chalice of blood for you!”)

Kamelot – Siege Perilous:
I don’t like this as much as the first two Kamelot’s, but that could change, as Kamelot has always had a way of sneaking up on me. It’s a real top-heavy album, the first half is great, but the second half sorta drags.

Riot – Inishmore:
I was pretty surprised to see this one in a listening station, and it sounded good, so I got it. It’s not nearly as wussy as I expected, and it’s got all sorts of nice dual lead work.

Primal Fear – Primal Fear:
I love Gamma Ray, and don’t care much for Judas Priest. Thus, I really like the Gamma Ray ripoff songs on this album, and could do without the Priest ripoff tracks. It also hurts when I go back and listen to Insanity & Genius – Ralf’s vocals were so much darker and more angry than they are on this.

Agathodaimon – Blacken the Angel:
I got this pretty recently, so it hasn’t had much time to grow. It seems to be well-produced, non-annoying black metal. They’ve got a 15 minute song, so that might be worth something.

Evergrey – The Dark Discovery:
This one hasn’t quite convinced me yet. The music seems great, and what’s cool about it is that they somehow found a niche in the overcrowed power/prog metal world that hadn’t yet been filled. I think my main hangup is the hard-rockish vocalist.

Symphony X – Twilight In Olympus:
It’s no Divine Wings of Tragedy, that’s for sure.

Winterkill – Freedom:
A local band that plays an interesting mix of power, thrash, and regular heavy metal. I could do without the cheesy Braveheart intro and songs like “You Anger Me, Bitch”, but it’s got a couple gems hidden in it.

Bruce Dickinson – The Chemical Wedding:
Heheh, yep, here’s Bruce way down here. I’m not quite sure what my problem with this one is, I just know that I like AoB a LOT more. I just haven’t gotten into the feeling of it at all, and on top of that, Bruce’s repetitive yelling somehow really bothers me. Heaviness is nice, but it seems like the style needs more melody than it ha.s.

Old Man’s Child – Ill Natured Spiritual Invasion:
Nice sellout black metal to listen to quickly, but it doesn’t seem to have too much depth to it.

Nocturnal Rites – Tales of Mystery and Imagination:
Power metal version of Old Man’s Child.

Primordial – A Journey’s End:
My brother tricked me into getting this one after a glowing review in Metal Maniacs. I dunno, I can’t really find anything wrong with it, but it’s sorta boring. It has some limited Celtic influence to liven things up, and overall it reminds me somewhat of Ulver’s Bergtatt, which is a good thing, but this album just doesn’t work for me.

Mundanus Imperium – The Spectral Spheres Coronation:
Ok, so it’s Dimmu Borgir with clean vocals, huh? Well, no one saw fit to tell me that the vocals are super-cheesy sounding hard-rock vocals (at least to my ears). The music sounds pretty good (if not quite dark enough to be like Dimmu Borgir), so we’ll see if this one gets better.

Whew, that’s a lot. Comments, inquiries, and ass-kickings are always welcome.

For months I’d been reading about this disc, Arcturus’s La Masquerade Infernale. It had picked up more ’10?s and perfect scores than any album I could remember, so I obviously bought it as soon as I saw a copy. As it turns out, it’s a progressive metal masterpiece, so I figured I’d review it here. I haven’t written a review in a while, I just sorta feel like writing one, and I think I’m going to try my best to ape the LarryD format.

The style-

Hrmm…well, here’s the hardest part right at the beginning. As I said, it’s progressive metal. 🙂 Of course, some people think of progressive metal as metal with operatic singing, complex songs, intricate playing, keyboards, and all that other stuff, as exemplified by bands like Dream Theater. Then there’s other people who think that it’s music to which few comparisons can be drawn, music that is at the cutting edge of the metal genre, like Amorphis or Opeth. La Masquerade Infernale is one of those rare albums that fits both definitions equally well. The band describes the style as “Faust Rock”, and that’s as good as any term I could come up with. But while the style is completely unique, there are parts with amazing similarities to Dream Theater’s Awake…it has some low guitar/bass parts very much like in “Mirror/Lie”, and keyboards that could easily appear in “Scarred” or “Space Dye Vest”. Anyway, to give some concrete terms to the style, it’s mostly metal, with lots of edgy melody. But then it’s all mixed up with a whole lot of “weirdness”. That “weirdness” comes in the form of complex song structures, quick time/mood changes, and interesting sounds and effects. It ends up being something majestic, powerful, and above all, frighteningly dark.

The production-

Someone made a post about this album a couple days ago (which partially induced me to post this now) and said that the production was a bit muddy. I dunno, maybe I’ve just been listening to too much crappy black metal, but to my ears, it sounds great. Overall it has a very warm, glossy sound to it. And the whole album seems to have about a thousand layers. In addition to the usual instruments, a string quartet, a flute, and a cornet are used from time to time, and they all mesh right into the flow of things. There’s also quite a bit of effects thrown in from that “weirdness” bin, like strange percussive noises and short backwards sounds. Once you get an idea of what they were going for, it doesn’t seem a bit overdone…everything works together to create this amazing mood.

The singer-

The vocals are clearly a focal point of this album. The majority are provided by G. Wolf (aka Garm, who has also sung in Ulver and Borknagar), in a style that could only be called “theatrical”. Basically, you get the feeling that the guy should be up on stage in an opera. Most of the stuff that he sings is on the low end (which is what makes it so unique), although he does vary his range a good bit. And unlike his previous work, there isn’t a single example of harsh black metal vocals on this album. In fact, his voice is crystal clear the whole way, LarryD should love it. Lead vocals on one song and backups elsewhere are provided by Simen Hestnaes. Like Garm, his vocals are also very theatrical (and clean), but in the higher range, and much more frantic sounding. The effect is incredible when they sing together. I don’t think a singing style can be called “unique” too often, but it definitely is in this case.

The band-

Besides the vocals, a clear standout in this band is the keyboards. Played by Steinar Sverd Johnsen (also in Covenant, which also has great keyboards), the keys are an integral part to the whole sound, but they never try to be a second guitar, which is nice. There’s plenty of piano stuff, orchestral-type sounds, and then, all kinds of “weird” things. The guitar is cool, most of the time not getting in the way of everything else, but sometimes stepping forward for very flowing solos. Bass is nice, nothing I notice too much, but it forms another layer in there. And finally, the drums are provided by Jan Axel Von Blomberg, aka the legendary Hellhammer. I recently saw him play with Mayhem at the Milwaukee Metalfest, and he’s amazing. Surprisingly, there are a few seconds of Mayhem-style blast beat on this album, but the majority of it is just very tasteful, well played drumming. There is a good bit of double-bass work, but it’s usually rather subdued. Two of the tracks are mostly instrumentals, and they make you see that the vocals aren’t the only thing that’s great about this album.

The comments-

Basically, I’m really curious what other people around here might think of this album. I’ve tried to hide this fact a little bit so people wouldn’t be prejudiced, but Arcturus’s first album was mostly a black metal album. Actually, like many “black metal” albums, the music wasn’t black metal at all, just the vocals. Anyway, I didn’t really know what to expect when I got this album, beyond “weird”, but the more I listen to it, the more I think that it’s something that people at Perpetual Motion should be going nuts over. The background of the band is the only reason I can think of that this album isn’t being hailed as one of the top progressive metal albums of all time. Oh, it also seems really hard to find for some reason, which sucks, because everyone should hear this album.