With COVID and inflation, I was worried that bargain bins wouldn't ever be back to full strength, but thankfully, over the past few months, they seem to yielding more goodies than ever (knock on wood!). Although the more recent bigger label stuff is usually not much in line with my personal tastes, it's nice to find it cheap!
All CDs were $2:
Blind Guardian - At the Edge of Time
Not bad overall, and I actually found some individual parts to be quite impressive. I enjoyed a lot of the orchestral sections because they seemed like natural, seamless additions to the music, and not contrived garnishes. Some of the buildups in opener "Sacred Worlds" even made me think of the "Am I Evil?" intro a bit. I was also surprised by the beginning of "A Voice in the Dark," with thrashiness reminding me of the heavier material way back on Follow the Blind. Unfortunately, the overused choral vocals and some of the more stereotypical sing-songy power metal tropes prevented me from getting into this more. I know that expecting my ideal--a return to a purer Battalions of Fear speed metal sound--is foolish, but there's material here that indicates they still have the ability to make an album that sounds like a modernized version of Follow the Blind. I wish they would.
Byzantine - Oblivion Beckons
Lamb of God/God Forbid style groove metal with a strong dose of progressiveness and a lot of various modern influences. I largely bought this based off a mention of Nevermore I read in an online review, and while I can sort of see the progressiveness and occasional use of clean vocals justifying it in a broad sense, I personally would expect far different things if a band were compared to Nevermore. Any good points here (there's some slight thrashiness at times) just seem diluted and overwhelmed by everything else here. Seems like music that would be more for loyal consumers of Blabbermouth or Loudwire.
Dark Tranquillity - Haven
Dark Tranquillity - The Mind's I
Dark Tranquillity - Projector
Dark Tranquillity - Skydancer/Of Chaos and Eternal Night
The two earlier albums are very good. It's funny, while I was listening to Skydancer, I was thinking to myself that it's probably the best material of the big 3 of Gothenburg melodeath, and that prompted me to revisit early At the Gates. As it turns out, I definitely prefer Gardens of Grief and The Red in the Sky Is Ours (to be fair, it's been so long since I've listened to any early In Flames that I can't say how they'd rank. I recall the Maidenish guitar harmonies being a lot more prominent than in other melodeath). The other two albums had zero impact on me and I can't recall anything specific even right after listening to them. (I'm a little disappointed The Gallery wasn't part of the haul, as if it was the reissue like the 2 earlier albums, it would have had all the cover song bonuses, which I probably would have enjoyed most of all).
Also, oddly, while I was checking the discs more closely for wear at home, I noticed Haven had an extremely faint image of the Kiss logo and lettering from the Dynasty album. The disc played fine even though it looked like it had some sort of ghostly residue on the bottom. I've seen a few cases where the top-of-disc print covers up something underneath that you can still see from the top of the disc, but my first time ever seeing something like this on the underside. Since it's so faint, my best guess is that it was stacked against the Kiss disc at some point and heat or pressure transferred a little bit of the disc print. Weird.
Elvenking - Wyrd
Power metal incorporating folk elements. Definitely skews towards the lighter and poppier side of power metal, although the folkiness makes them come across as more natural and coherent than the overly sweet and flowery sing-songy power metal bands. The folk side of things isn't as overblown as I thought it might be, so it's not as cheesy as I was honestly expecting. Still, it doesn't rise past the level of being just okayish power metal.
Gates of Winter - Lux Aeterna
This is quite multi-faceted, and while it's not inaccurate to put it under the progressive metal umbrella, all of the components here make it adjacent to a couple of genres. There's always a song structure or keyboard run to keep it tethered to prog., although it's not always at the forefront. Ethereal keyboards and heavy symphonic elements are everywhere, along with more DM-like backing vocals as well as female vocals in The Gathering vein. There's lots of intermingling, even within single songs. Grouped very loosely, the first half of the album feels more like some sort of symphonic prog./power metal, and the later half feels more atmospheric, with many sections having similarities to gothic metal. I would be comfortable calling the end part of "A Dark Affliction" and parts of "Omega" symphonic doom.
Rwake - If You Walk Before You Crawl You Crawl Before You Die
All over the place sludgy stuff, with accoustic passages, chaotic sludge sections, more intricate Neurosis-inspired parts, and lots of stonerish riffs. The vocal style helps make this seem more extreme than it actually is. Especially after some parts of the opening track, I was expecting doominess that never really came. Okay as a background listen but pretty forgettable stuff.
Skyclad - Jonah's Ark
Pleasant enough. Even though the two preceding albums were hardly pure thrashing, this seems even less thrashy overall and in a mellower/folksier vein. The speedy riff in "Thinking Allowed" sticks out as being more mainstream metal-ish among Skyclad's songs, sounding like it could have been taken from a good Ozzy or Maiden track.
Voivod - Katorz
This is the first full Voivod album I've heard since Snake rejoined. I'm not a particular fan of Nothingface, Angel Rat, or The Outer Limits, but I also don't mind them. This did not impress me at all, though. There's a more rock-like feel, and in that sense it's slightly reminiscent of Angel Rat (though not as unheavy) and The Outer Limits, though perhaps with some more overt punkiness as well. The progressive Voivod weirdness here seems severely toned down, and what is here feels largely like diluted Nothingface-esque ideas.
