Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Proposed "Best Of" Lists

There was a thread on the Metal Archives recently where the original poster asked the following:

Pick out one of your favorite bands, famous or not, and create your own “Best Of” out of ten to twelve songs; link it to YouTube and say a little something about why you chose the songs. I think this could be awesome for people who want to get into a band, or who are just curious to what regular fans think of a bands output.

Here was my response:

For me, the band I would pick to do a best-of would be Amorphis. In particular, I picked later-period Amorphis with Tomi Joutsen singing. While I like their early death metal material, their later progressive material is what I find myself coming back to again and again. I would have loved to have Amorphis played at my wedding last year because I believe that a lot of their songs while not explicitly romantic, certainly carry with them a romantic and emotional feel. Many of the songs below capture that perfectly. I chose to start out with "House of Sleep" because that is the song that I believe best captures this feeling. I still find myself listening to Amorphis frequently when I am in a melancholic mood.

1. "House of Sleep" - Eclipse
2. "Her Alone" - Silent Waters
3. "Silver Bride" - Skyforger
4. "My Sun" - Skyforger
5. "Course of Fate" - Skyforger
6. "You I Need" - The Beginning of Times
7. "Mermaid" - The Beginning of Times
8. "Reformation" - The Beginning of Times
9. "Leaves Scar" - Eclipse
10. "I of Crimson Blood" - Silent Waters

Any thoughts?

4 comments:

  1. This is kind of an interesting idea.

    As for your selections, I don't know Amorphis as well as you do. I've never listened to The Beginning of Times or Silent Waters, but I like your picks from Eclipse and Skyforger. I think Silver Bride is my favorite of the tracks you listed.

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  2. I would personally like to pick Mercyful Fate . . . but I don't know how I could possibly narrow it down to 10. Purely off the top of my head:
    Gypsy
    Egypt
    Satan's Fall
    Don't Break the Oath
    Corspe without a Soul
    Black Funeral
    Buried Alive
    Desecration of Souls
    Kutulu
    Into the Coven

    But, damn, I know I have to stop at 10, so, let's just go with those.

    Death would be another good one.
    The Philosopher
    Evil Dead
    Crystal Mountain
    Pull the Plug
    Scavenger of Human Sorrow
    Leprosy
    Lack of Comprehension
    Flesh and the Power It Holds
    Altering the Future
    Painkiller

    Danzig (this one in chronological order):
    Mother
    Twist of Cain
    Girl
    How the Gods Kill
    Dirty Black Summer
    Little Whip
    Sacrifice
    Five Finger Crawl
    Wicked Pussycat
    Night Star Hel

    Fun idea.

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  3. Also, the Danzig one got me thinking that the idea is most interesting when a band has gone through distinct phases in their sound. Amorphis would be a great one to do that with, as would Enslaved, Bathory, Black Sabbath, or the most obvious, Metallica. And to a lesser extent Baroness and Mastodon.

    On Amorphis themselves, I still feel like Elegy is my favorite, although I'm definitely more familiar with the Joutsen material than their earlier stuff.

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  4. That would have been the obvious choice . . . but I like "Girl" better. I had to cut it down somewhere, and the similarity between I and II made II get the shaft.

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