The Dissident

My dad gave me his records a little over 3 years ago when I really started getting into vinyl, his was a combination of his and his sister's. From his taste there was Led Zeppelin, AC/DC and Pink Floyd, among others. While his sister's was purely from the 60s and earlier, mostly Beatles and their individual side projects. Although I was surprised by finding a very well taken care of copy of Live After Death by Iron Maiden, another nice surpise was Screaming For Vengeance and British Steel which I suspect were my moms since she was the Priest fan when they were big.

Black Sabbath - Cross Purposes

On 12/26/2020 at 12:58 PM, Gordon Comstock said:

On paper, the NITL setlists have been great. They've played almost everything fans could've asked for.

Honest question: would you guys prefer to hear your favourite singer struggle through "great" songs like Estranged, YCBM and Rocket Queen for 3+ hours, or give good performances of "good/ok" songs like Bad Obsession or Down On The Farm and cut the set down to 2 hours, no mickey mouse vocals outside the few hits they have to play even if that means dropping some fan favourites?

An hour and a half to 2 hour show with hits being rotated in and out of the set would be ideal, I loved the 3 hour shows because I got to hear a ton of music and I don't mind how Axl sounded in 2017. Even reformatting certain tougher songs that have to be done could be cool, like why not an acoustic rendition of Sweet Child O Mine yes it isn't what you want to hear but you still hear it, like The Who did for Won't Get Fooled Again on their latest tour.  Although I don't see Rocket Queen getting dropped, nor YCBM. I feel Estranged could be alternated with November Rain as their big ballad of the night or something like they did with Don't Cry and Patience. 

5 hours ago, RussTCB said:

Wish You Were Here is such a masterpiece and a really good way to show off the magic of vinyl. 

Agreed, I'm not a huge Pink Floyd fan, but I completely agree it is by far the strongest of the albums I've heard (Dark Side Of The Moon, Animals, WYWH, The Wall.)

Recieved the following from my family for christmas:

• Rush - Fly By Night
• Pink Floyd - Wish You Were Here
• Queensryche - The Verdict

I want to first acknowledge that I do want a new album very much, but I do feel like if they can't capitalize on a new album by touring currently it wouldn't be worth it to release it currently. If they had already released a reunion album then I'd be on the train of why haven't you released one during the lockdown. But seeing as they haven't yet released a reunion album I don't think it would be right in a way to release one during the lockdown. That being said if they released CD2 or some compilation of demos from the CD era it would be fine but not a proper album at this time. 

I think they could have done more, but I don't think an album is the answer until things get better. 

2020 in terms of new music for me has mainly been playing catch up but I can say the following tracks have been some which I really enjoyed:

• Ordinary Man - Ozzy Osbourne - This track frankly is my favourite track which Ozzy sings on at any point in his career, it is a beautiful ballad and the music video is one of the few which I will actually watch (I hate the concept of music videos). 
• Realize & The Mists Of Time - AC/DC - Power Up is a great comeback for AC/DC and these two tracks are the ones which I enjoy the most, Realize being a brilliant rocker which calls back to the 80s, with The Mists Of Time being a mini rocker
• Throw My Bones - Deep Purple - This is how a band should age, Ian Gillen sounds amazing, and the band has really evolved with their frankly advanced age, this track is like rock meets crooning, and I dig it. 

44 minutes ago, MaskingApathy said:

Would be awesome if they turned those 20 songs into 2 SMKC albums, kind of how Mark Tremonti split up the songs for his second and third albums. Very encouraging to hear that they have that much material ready to go.

Especially with Myles being picky about song shelf lives this would be super awesome!

Yes - Going For The One

Out Ta Get Me directly into Nightrain

Yes - And You And I, such a powerful and beautiful track

Yes they should, although all talking should be done prior to the track beginning, and band introductions should be seprarate from the track whenever possible. 

I haven't gone alone to one yet, but this potentially would occur once we are allowed to have them again. 

November Rain, Estranged and Don't Cry, although when I hear them often the impact is lessened.

8 hours ago, Stiff Competition said:

The mono set is the one to get. It’s spectacular, though pretty pricey these days. The stereo one is ok. I’ve had it and sold it. I have the MFSL set that covers the stereo side of things.

And yeah, the queen set was very nicely executed. It’s the same setup as the Beatles sets (Same box, comes with a book, etc...just wrapped differently)

I've been toying with the Queen and Rolling Stones Box sets for weeks. This while incredibly helpful makes them more tempting which isn't ideal at this time xD

Over the last week: 

• Europe - Wings Of Tomorrow
• AC/DC - Power Up
• AC/DC - Ballbreaker

In progress:

Iced Earth - Alive In Athens,  although this one is being split over multiple sittings due to it being 3 hours. 

Probably my final Vinyl purchase for the year, unless I come across some of the records on my instant purchase list, is the 5 vinyl box set of Iced Earth - Alive In Athens. It came in today, the set looks beautiful, I'm deciding on how I approach it since the album is 3 hours long. That cover art was created for Vinyl.

Nightwish - Ever Dream (Live At Wacken 2013)

Kiss -  Alive!

Deep Purple - Stormbringer

Alter Bridge - Walk The Sky 2.0

ZZ Top - Eliminator

I suspect he hasn't been given the go ahead to comment on the new SMKC album, he didn't talk about Living The Dream until Slash officially announced it either if I remember correctly.

Add Kiss - Alive! to that list of recently acquired albums. Such a good live album. 

Over the past month I've been acquiring some records to either complete classic runs of bands I've been into for a while, or to add to the collection of more recently discovered bands that I've been getting into, albiet I'm very late to the game for some of these bands, either by avoidance or taking longer to get used to their singer's vocals

• Black Sabbath - Paranoid
• Black Sabbath - Sabbath Bloody Sabbath
• Black Sabbath - Sabotage
• Elton John - Madman Across The Water
• Judas Priest - Sad Wings Of Destiny
• Judas Priest - Angel Of Retribution
• Rush - Signals
• Rush - Grace Under Pressure
• Rush - Power Windows
• Rush - Presto
• Scorpions - Savage Amusement
• Yes - The Yes Album
• Yes - Fragile
• Yes - Close To The Edge
• Yes - Tales From Topographic Oceans
• Yes - 90125

Needless to say my turntable has had quite a few spins as of late. 

I saw Plant in 2018 with my dad, he was absolutely amazing, super funny and performed a stellar set.

20 hours ago, Free Bird said:

I don't know, I've often read this argument with the lenghth of WOF. If I were responsible for that I'd have shorten it for 4 songs. Number 10 and 13-15. Those are the songs I skip everytime. 

When reading your name I don't think you would agree with me. Instead you would have shorten the album with songs that I probably wouldn't like to miss. 

I rather have one more song on an album that I don't like than one song less that I like. But that's just my opinion.

Regardless, we agree on AL is the weakest album of SMKC, the weakest, but it's still enjoyable for me with Anastasia and Halo as the strongest tracks on there. 

As someone who likes to sit down and actively listen to whole albums I prefer albums around the 40-50 minute mark. That being said I love the idea of having more music from artists for the purpose of playlists. If I were to go extreme and make a 40 minute album it would be the following:

1. World On Fire
2. Shadow Life
3. Wicked Stone
4. Bent To Fly
5. Beneath The Savage Sun
6. Avalon
7. The Dissident
8. The Unholy

Order would be different, and the rest of the album I do need to revisit sometime soon since my taste may have changed. 

Both Living The Dream and World On Fire are phenomenal albums, the latter is just a little too long, I will say that World On Fire has grown on me more lately but Living The Dream is still a stronger album IMO. Apocalyptic Love doesn't come close to either.