Hey, after a brief hiatus, I’m back with another listening room post! I didn’t intend to be away for as long as I was, but oh well, I’m here now. As per usual, I’ll go through my favourite new releases that I’ve been listening to recently, as well as my general listening habits in and out of the metal world. This one will be a little different though, instead of going through releases that were from the last week, like I did previously,y I’m going to go through my favourite release since the last time I did this. So without further ado, here is my favourite release of the past few weeks.
Imperial Triumphant – Goldstar
It was actually surprisingly difficult to choose a favourite, and it ended up being a toss-up between this album and the latest one from Deafheaven. This is strange to me because both Imperial Triumphant and Deafheaven are bands I have struggled to get into previously, but both bands have well and truly won me over with their latest albums, and Imperial Triumphant’s Goldstar is, in my opinion, one of the best albums of the whole year if not the best so far. Again, I struggled to get into them previously, while I always thought there was quality in the music, their brand of blackened jazz/death metal always proved to be a little too out there for my personal listening habits. This changed that. It’s still completely batshit and jarring so you cannot accuse this band of selling out (although I wouldn’t be surprised if I were to find comments on Facebook and Instagram saying exactly that), but it is still the most “accessible” thing that they have done. There are a lot more riffs that I can latch onto, a lot more memorable moments, but they never manage to lose what makes Imperial Triumphant such a unique band. I am confident in saying it’s the best Imperial Triumphant album that I have heard, and I will not be surprised if it keeps a top 5 spot in my album of the year list!
Now, onto what I’ve been latching onto in general recently. I’ll start off with a couple of metal releases that I’ve been into recently, then round it off with my non-metal pick for this week’s entry. I’ll start off with my album pick, which is Opeth’s Deliverance.
Now, I will put a quick disclaimer here. I listen to Opeth on a near-daily basis, and have done so for at least 3 years at this point. Therefore, to include them on my listening room posts would be a little bit pointless and also a little boring. But, I decided to include Deliverance on here because it’s not an album I’ve really revisited a ton until now. It’s nowhere near my favourite Opeth albums, but I still absolutely love everything about it. Of course, it was the follow-up to Blackwater Park, which is my favourite Opeth album and also widely considered to be their peak, so of course following that was going to be difficult, but the choice to do so with two albums which were the polar opposite in sound was a bold and, frankly, awesome move. I prefer Damnation in my general listening habits, that is my 3rd favourite album behind Blackwater Park and Still Life, but really, when it comes to all the albums they did from Still Life to Watershed, the difference in ranking is so negligible that you might as well just not try. Their run of albums from 1999 through to 2008 is literally perfect,t and every single album they did at the time is some of their best stuff.
Anyway, back to Deliverance. I always forget just how amazing the start of this album is. Wreath has one of my favourite Opeth riffs ever, and then to follow that up with the title track, which is one of Opeth’s most iconic songs, is a one-two punch that is guaranteed to completely floor anyone. The reason why I don’t typically go back to it is because I do not think the rest of the album is as strong as those two songs, but putting on tracks like Master’s Apprentices and By The Pain I See In Others is always a damn good time.
My next pick could technically be included in my favourite new releases, but I’ll include it here as I can see myself jamming it nonstop until the album is released in a couple of weeks, and that is the new single from Ghost, titled “Lachryma”. As you might guess, I’ve been excited for the next offering from Ghost since it was first announced, and while I really liked the first single, Satanized, this song is head and shoulders above it and has just put my excitement for the new album to new heights. It is an out and out, certified fucking BANGER! I have not been able to stop listening to it since it came out on Friday, and I have had the chorus lodged in my brain so deep that I will probably be singing it for at the very least the rest of this month. The song absolutely rules, and if the rest of the album is even half as good as this, we’ve got a real banger of an album on our hands.
Now, my non-metal listening habits have been a little sparse recently, there’s not a whole lot I’ve gravitated to that I haven’t talked about in previous posts, but there is still one album that I’ve enjoyed going back to a lot in the past couple of weeks: the self titled album from Genesis.
The pop era of Genesis has divided opinions among the fans of the band, and while I don’t think Invisible Touch and We Can’t Dance have much to offer aside from maybe 3 tracks (Land of Confusion, No Son of Mine and Jesus He Knows Me), I think the catalogue from Trick of the Tail all the way through to the self titled album is killer, and I think the transition to the more pop oriented material was a really cool one when spread over that run of albums. While I’d say that there are certainly better albums from the Phil Collins era, the self-titled has always been a favourite of mine to go back to. The quality of the first 4 tracks on the album is absolutely undeniable. I am a fan of Illegal Alien despite it being pretty questionable lyrically and also probably the most annoying earworm on the album, and Just a Job to Do and Taking it All Too Hard are also awesome songs. I think a lot of people disregard the Collins era of Genesis either because they have been told to by disgruntled prog era Genesis fans, or because they only heard songs like Invisible Touch and I Can’t Dance, which are both terrible songs, as well as probably hearing a lot of Collins’s solo material and not being fans of it, but I would recommend that anyone who isn’t sure about this era of Genesis to just give it a go. It’s cool to see the transition from prog rock to out and out pop and, for as much hate as Collins has gotten over the years, his ability to write a pop hook, combined with his vocal ability and his phenomenally underrated and overlooked drumming ability, is almost second to none, and he’s always been a guy I’ve looked up to as a songwriter and as a drummer. Just go from Trick of the Tail through to the self-titled, and I guarantee you’ll find a lot to love.
So that’s it for this week’s segment. All being well, I’ll be back next week for another one! Until then, check these albums out if you haven’t already, let me know what you want me to check out as well as what you think of my picks, and I’ll see you next week.
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