Metal, especially Extreme metal, as a whole, is a fairly inaccessible genre of music, but there are records that manage to be even more difficult to get into. Be it aesthetics, composition, or what have you; some are harder to appreciate than others. This thread is to discuss records that you've either had a Hard Time appreciating, and ones that took you a long time before you really loved.

I think the first one that comes to my mind is the legendary At The Gates and their mindfuck of a record known as The Red In The Sky Is Ours. TRITSIO was one of the first truly progressive Death Metal records in my view; the song Structures are much more flowing yet jagged than you'd expect, and the band uses a lot of compositional techniques that were absolutely NOT common in 1992. ("Through Gardens of Grief" has a moment where a melodic tremolo riff is counterpointed by something that sounds like it came from Demilich, of all bands) The violin as well plays a big role in a couple of songs.

For me, this is the definition of a flawed Masterpiece; much has been said about the production job (it's really 'wet' sounding for lack of a better descriptor, the guitar tone sounds weird as fuck), but the songs in and of themselves have a staggering amount of Ideas in them - especially in terms of counterpoint riffing - and sometimes the band kind of puts them together in a way that sounds more awkward than anything else. But what makes the album stand out to me, above the technicality of it all, is the sheer emotional Power of the record. The songs on this record have a genuinely grief-striken, bordering on psychotic feel to them, and it's Nothing like any other Death Metal record i've ever heard. It's incredibly hard to articulate, and I suspect it might just be my perception of the record.

I don't think i'll ever fully get it, as an album. I realized today that I love it dearly and I consider it to be At the Gates's Shining moment as a band, with the exception of the first half of With Fear... But it's an album that I don't think i'll ever fully unravel.

Some others...

-Early Kataklysm. Mystical Gate of Reincarnation and Sorcery are madness in musical form. Some of the best, most ambitious melodic Death Metal i've ever heard for all of that.

-Cirith Ungol. I had a Hard Time appreciating these legends of Heavy Metal, because of Tim Baker's weird fucking vocals and their really anachronistic style of metal, but I genuinely love this band nowadays. King of the Dead is one of my favourite metal records of all time, and Frost and Fire is great in its own right too.

I'd like to see some of the stories people have behind bands like what I mentioned in the title, so have at!

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Eventually, these became favourite bands of mine.


Portal
Just hearing their music at first screws with your mind. Take the mysterious droning atmosphere of Sunn O))), mix it with war metal, and lastly make the guitarist be absolutely insane. Their production also hurts their accessibility too, but without it, they wouldn't be who they are. It is quite strange though, bands like Obscura, Necrophagist and associated bands (wank) can be as technical as they can, but it turns cheesy. Portal goes Beyond them in thought of technical proficiency, yet doesn't sound cheesy at all.

Diapsiquir
Now, these guys are pretty much the totality of Fucked Up music. They sound as if The Axis Of Perdition were trapped in a carnival fun house with Stalaggh. Just from hearing one song by them you'll realize why they are hard to get into. Their vocals are scrambled, distorted. The guitars are technical and constantly shifting from Insane tremolo to odd carnival-esque grooves. Everything else is just bundled on top. It actually seems quite beautiful, oddly.

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Last.fm: Mercenarion

i've put off listening to Insomnium for a long time, i finally decided to check out their album Since it all came down. Wish i listened to that band sooner... they're probly one of the best Melodic Death Metal bands i've heard in awhile. it's so melodic its almost Atmospheric

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Shit yeah!... Shit no, No One likes shit!

I actually tried them out and I thought they would be more Fucked Up then you said that they were. I thought they sounded like early Das Ich just that they used electric guitar and played faster. It was actually decent, I might get more into it later.

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I don't think this thread is about bands you put off checking out and were blown away by, it's for albums you heard, didn't like, but gradually warmed to.

This happens a lot to me because some of the best albums (especially in OSDM) are incredibly deep and dense and it's easy to miss a lot from them on the first listen. A couple examples:

Gorguts - From Wisdom to Hate
their first albums are hard enough to get into in their own right, but it's when they really started going out there with their music that made it extremely inaccessible. The malformed, dissonant-as-fuck riffs just completely caught me off-guard the first time around- I had never heard anything like this before, and quite frankly I didn't really like it. I tried to struggle through the album though, because I could tell the band had some good Ideas going on and every now and then I heard a riff I kinda liked. Every now and then, I listened to it more and more, and now, it's friggin great. The same thing happened to me with Obscura (the album), but I actually consider that album to be MORE accessible than FWtH, for some reason. Maybe it's cause FWtH was the first Gorguts album I heard.

Agalloch - The Mantle
Believe it. After I was absolutely captivated and FLOORED by Ashes Against the Grain (after I heard the whole album in full, Agalloch became my favorite band and haven't been Dethroned since, it's that good) I, of course, had to go check otu their other stuff. Next thing I got into was The Mantle. This is definitely Agalloch's "fullest" album-even moreso than Marrow of the Spirit- it really embraces all the elements of their sound; the black/folk from the earlier stuff, the post-rock Textures of Ashes, and the neofolk stuff they have sprinkled throughout their discography. There's just so much going on it's hard to take it all in the first time around, but the album still maintained my interest thanks to the Ethereal clean vocals. Now, it's a 90% album for me at the least.

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If you are a false, don't entry, or you'll be burned and died!

Enigmatick more of less has it Nailed Down what I was getting at with the thread concept. I'm not opposed to people writing about stuff they've put off for a long time though.

Regarding Gorguts, i've always been a HUGE fan of The Erosion of Sanity and From Wisdom. I remember I liked Erosion when I first heard it, but for some reason it literally slipped off of my rotation list for a year until I gave it a listen. I absolutely loved the album when I heard it again; in a lot of ways, it's directly comparable to Suffocation musically but Gorguts took it farther than even that band did in progressive waters. The riffs are stunning to me; they're obvious thick and percussive, but there's a deeply progressive nature to their Craft that really makes the album stick out above and beyond. (Imagine Suffocation meeting early Atrocity, for the bunch of you who haven't checked it out) Luc Lemay's vocals on that record are incredible, possibly his best performance all told and the rhythm section is Nothing short of brilliant in their own right.

I've actually never been sure whether I prefer it or From Wisdom; both releases are Gorguts at their best to me. I like Obscura a lot, but I think From Wisdom is a more balanced and focused release to me.

Another one for me - since I brought them up in the chat - was Atheist's Unquestionable Presence. Atheist was one of the first Death Metal bands (along side Death and Possessed) and while I loved Piece of Time, it was a record that I just didn't quite have a full handle on back then. Unquestionable Presence was an entirely new ball game; more progressive, more jazzy than before, and with so many loops and turns that I could never really keep up with the record in my Extreme metal infancy.

Nowadays, I absolutely love it. I consider it pretty my gold standard for technical death metal. The riffs are absolutely brilliant, the harmonies Intense and colorful, and it has some of THE Absolute greatest lead guitar work i've ever heard on a metal record - I know that's not an original claim for a tech-death band, but the solos are just so melodically interesting and punctual that I love them whenever they appear. The rhythm section is flawless, and Kelly Schaffer gives one of the most fitting vocal performances i've ever heard for a Death Metal record. It's damn near flawless in my book.

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This took me quite a while to obtain. I heard it for the first time via mp3 download and then thought the vinyl would sound great. Managed to find it in a bad-ass record shop in Toronto on Queen's Street which has like 5 record shops and I snapped it up in a second. I was right. It sounds incredible on vinyl.
 
Oh, I realize it's been forever and a day since the last time I put up my recent vinyl scores. I'll have to remember to do that as I have like a dozen or more records since the last time I posted.

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I do album art for bands! Send me a Message or email [email protected] for more info. My website: http://curtisbotham.weebly.com/

Anything from Obituary. I had a friend who was really big into them and even though I only really got into Death Metal a few years ago, the enjoyment that I got from the early bands spread like a wildfire through my tastes (The Florida and Swedish scenes especially). Obituary, though, took quite a while for me to really 'get', but now I like them quite a bit. The first four albums are especially awesome, but the few songs i've heard from the albums after those four have been good as well.

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I can't say I've gone out of my way trying to find an album, I'm more of I see -> I like -> I buy (that is a consequence of listening to everything on the internet beforehand. I'm not much of a Blind buyer, so I know what I get...)
 Although, when I do search for a specific album, I have the email/ phone numbers of some of the shops' that sell metal cds and merch... and the moment they get it, they tell me and  I ask them to keep a copy for me. I've done this with Negura Bunget's OM (believe me, it was hard to find!) and I will do the same with Dordeduh's future release...
 
I think an album that is somewhat difficult to find was Myrkgrav - Trollskau, Skrømt og Kølabrenning, I got that one at a metal fair.
 
 

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When in Danger or in doubt,
Run in circles, Scream and shout.

In a Muslim society, anything offensive will be hard to attain. I currently live in Dubai, on the Arabian peninsula. Trying to get Mayhem's De Mysteriis DOM Sathanas was like trying to enjoy a Korn record - it was super hard. So hard in Fact that I had to get it in a different country (the Mayhem record that is).

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