Psychotic Waltz - A Social Grace reviewed by Time_Signature at Progfreak.com

I've never understood the hype around Muse among progressive music fans. Having heard this album, however, I do appreciate the fact the Muse's music is quality alternative rock containing some progressive elements. I have yet to join the hype, but I do like this album, which has a very retro feel to it while still looking forward, sounding most of all like the offspring of Queen and 80s U2 in space (which, I must admit, does make me think "Haven't I heard this before?", every now and then?). The main strength of this album, I think, is combination of athmospheric synthesizers, catchy melodies, and melancholic vocals which has a strange drawing effect upon the listener.

Great performance - as always - but mediocre sound production.

While not perfectly, this is basically a good and, at the time of making, original idea. Puffy64 seemlessy mixes heavily distorted guitars with the C64-ish sounds reminiscent of those used in the original game. While not that well executed, the music on this album does have a certain drawing je ne sais quoi to it. There is some really nice quitar work on it in the form of solos and interesting rhythms, and the use of C64 computer sounds makes for a semi-progressive edge (but not enought to even make it prog-related) and an interesting retro ambience.

A classic and one of the best - and most influential alternative metal albums of the last millennium. It contains a lot of progressive elements (such as tempo changes, odd time signatures and quirky 4/4 patterns, and genre transendence) without ever being a full-blown progressive album. There are individual tunes, however, that could be categorized as progressive proper, such as "Zombie Eathers" and "The Real Thing". In any case, this is a classic alt metal album fusing metal with funk, rap, hard rock and other genres without being as dull as a lot of nü metal is.

If you like doom metal, you have to acquire this classic. While very obviously inspired by the likes of Candlemass (there's even a silly Candlemass-like narrative voice on one of the tracks), "Into the Depths of Sorrow" is nonetheless original in its own way. Firstly, it contains several heavy riffs that are based on Middle Eastern scales, which has more or less become a trademark of SA's. Secondly, the incorporation of power metal elements (and eastern influences) creates a genre that is not as blues inspired as many first generation doom bands were (still, there are some cool pentatonic riffs on this album). Thirdly, SA's compositions one this album are more complex than was typical of the doom metal at the time. And lastly, there's Rob Lowe's voice - that in itself is worth buying the album for.

A lot of strong power metal tunes on this one, but boy am I glad they got rid of that vocalist, because he's terrible.

Another power metal milestone by Iced Earth.

What a great album this is! The music's straight out epic doom the way it should be. I really like Johan Langquist's vocals on this album (theer's a quality of desperation to his singing that neither Messiah Marcolin nor Rob Lowe possesses).

 I stumbled across this album in the local record store in the discount section. The price was 5 DKR (that's less than one Euro), so I thought "What the hell!".

Was it worth it? Gee, I actually don't know. I guess, stylistically, it's a sort of mixture Grunge, Hardcore and early Nu-Metal. There are a bunch of nice groovy riffs on this album and some cool breakdowns and changes, too, but on the whole this album is quite forgettable and uninspiring and tends to be monotonous (they could have avoided this by adding some guitar melodies and solos). The yelled vocals quickly get annoying and add further monotony - had their vocalist been able to add some variation to his singing, Compression would have sounded less monotonous. As it is now, this album is boring - simply boring.

It's really a shame, because, as mentioned above, there are a lot of cool riffs and a lot of potential, which unfortunately drown in monotony and boring, stipid, crappy vocals. A shame!

A great album which, with its lack of growls and distorted guitars, is also a very brave album from Opeth. Rather than blending death metal and progressive rock, it seems that on this album, Åkerfeldt is aiming for a blend of melancholic 90s-style alternative rock with progressive rock, and it works quite well.

A very cool cover version of Michael Jackson's "Smooth Criminal", while the other two songs are boring and uninspiring to me - but hats off for the band having two totally non-commercial alternative tunes on a single.

A great, almost prototypical, German speed/power metal album which showcases Helloween's affinity for combining melody with speed. Unfortunately, it is very much impaired by Kai Hansen's terrible vocals.

Holy cow! I really like this one. It's not terribly progressive, but. man, it's heavy. Much heavier than I'd expect. Still, it's melodic and the female vocals work really well. I think anyone who likes melancholic alternative rock and hard-hitting rock should like this one.

Much better than their debut, "Metal on Metal" is a heavy metal classic that lives up to its name. Lips' voice is totally sick and the songs both harder and heavier than on "Hard and Heavy" - almost thrashy in places. The silly cock rock lyrics of the debut album have also given way for nihilistic lyrics celebrating heavy metal music.

Not a bad rock album, but it did not stand the test of time (still, there are a lot of very cool elements on the album which are almost ahead of their time).

A hard rocking in-yer-face classic metal album with nods towards Sabbath, Purple, AC/DC and a lot of other hard rock heroes, but still unmistakably an original Anvil effort.

One of my favorite powermetal albums, "Somewhere Far Beyond" is really a magnificent power metal album which successfully combines the epicness of power metal with the fast picking of speed metal.

Unlike BG's other efforts this album is not timeless. But that's okay because it displays a lot of elements that I liked about late 80s German speed/power metal like fast staccato guitar and machine gun "oompaloompa" drums. On top of that it's, as is typical of BG, also a very melodic album.

The bonus tracks on the remastered version are wonderfully Iron Maiden-esque, and they are also more progressive than the album proper.

Gone is any trace of extreme metal, grindcore and tech progginess, Jeff Walker's growling vocals being the only hint of the Carcass' past as an extreme metal band. In the mid 90s a lot of thrash metal, death metal and other extreme metal bands slowed down the pace and became more rockish than extreme. In many cases, what they ended up producing was less than interesting.

Not so with Carcass' "Swansong". While not as good as "Necroticism" or "Heartwork" the straight forward metal album that is "Swansong" is actually not half bad. It is packed with catchy yet hardrocking metal tunes, and I must admit, I like it more than I thought I would. I especially like the extensive use of guitar harmonies and varied drumming. The growly vocals fit nicely into the picture, adding some edge to the album.

I know a lot of Carcass fans were disappointed with the album, because they expected another extreme metal album, but if you like metal in general, then I think "Swansong" will appeal to you.

A magnificent tech death metal album, this one. While less complex and progressive than its predecessor, "Heartwork" is certainly still an outstanding album in a genre that ended up eating itself.