#9 - John Arch

Okay, so I'm kind of cheating because I already covered Fates Warning and all of John Arch's material since his days in that illustrious band have been in collaboration with Fates' guitarist Jim Matheos.  But please indulge me, as I think his two albums since 1986's Awaken the Guardian, 2003's A Twist of Fate and 2011's Sympathetic Resonance (as Arch/Matheos, and featuring the rest of Fates Warning as well, minus current lead singer Ray Alder), are substantially better than the already terrific three on which he appeared with the band (if maybe not as influential).

A Twist of Fate is one of my favorite albums, even though it's a short one with just two songs clocking in at a total of just about 28 minutes.  As they say, always leave 'em wanting more.  John had been out of music (professional music anyway) for about 17 years when he decided to put together his solo EP.  The first song, "Relentless" is the heavier of the two songs, and the first cowritten by John and Jim since the Fates days.  It's an awesome song and deserves a listen, but I prefer the closer on the EP, "Cheyenne", which features violin along with the standard prog-metal instrumentation of guitar, keys, bass and drums.  In addition to Jim, prodigious chops are on display by Fates' bassist Joey Vera and drummer Mike Portnoy of Dream Theater fame.

And here's a live clip of Fates Warning from 2016, playing a one-gig reunion at Atlanta's Progpower festival, where I believe they played Awaken the Guardian in its entirety in celebration of that album's 30th anniversary.  Would have loved to have gone to that one.  As you can hear, especially if you compare to early Fates Warning live recordings, John's voice and mastery of it are like a fine wine.

#10 - Amorphis

Finnish stalwarts and one of the most accessible bands on the mega-mixed-tape, Amorphis kick off the top 10.  Way back in the early 90s, Amorphis started off as a member of the Finnish arm of the raw and early Swedish Melodic death metal scene.  It didn't take long for them to start tacking on other influences, starting with doom metal, then folk music, then progressive and even pop rock.  I first discovered them thanks to BNR Metal around 1998 or 99.  The recommendation was their third album, Elegy, which was released in 1996, and what a recommendation it was.  The songs are based on Finnish folk poems from the 1840 collection Kanteletar, and the music is clearly composed to suit the subject material, making heavy use of folk melody and cadence.  Elegy offsets the growled vocals of their previous two albums with the cleans of then new vocalist Pasi Koskinen to great effect, complimenting the folky compound meters, pronounced keyboards, occasional traditional instruments and driving rock on one solid offering after another.  Honestly, Elegy is a truly an excellent album, and if you've not given it a spin, I highly encourage it.  Even those who don't like metal can find a lot to like in it.

As great an album as Elegy is (and it IS great), I think I'm one of a small minority of fans who even prefers 2001's Am Universum, which eschews the growled vocals entirely for a uniquely layered progressive rock approach.  The album is wholly listenable, seamlessly merging and blending genres without ever coming across as pretentious, forced or overblown. I'm including the opening track, "Alone", here, whose layered opening and pop rock groove just work fantastically well together.

Koskinen left the band a couple years and one album after Am Universum and was replaced by Tomi Joutsen in 2005.  Losing their distinct vocal sound could have been catastrophic for the band, but they didn't miss a step while returning to their contrasting use of growled and sung vocals, for which Joutsen proved to be the perfect deliverer.  Since then, the band has released a string of seven solid albums featuring their unique blend of melodic death, folk and progressive metal, including Magic & Mayhem, a rearranging and recording of a dozen of their early hits from the first three albums.  Below is a 2010 performance of one of those great songs from Elegy, "My Kantele", performed in Oulu, Finland in support of that release.  It gives a taste of their more recent (as in the last 10 years) sound and live performance, and I hope you enjoy it.

#11 - Cynic

In 1993, tech metal pioneers Cynic released their groundbreaking debut Focus, but it wasn't until five years later that I first heard them.  As with a lot of great music, my friend Chris first introduced me, and as with a lot of forward-thinking music, it took me a while to catch on.  But over the years, I've come to appreciate the album as one of the most important, innovative and influential offerings in the now long and (to me) illustrious history of the metal genre.

Cynic grew out of the burgeoning Florida death metal scene in the late 80's/early 90's which, thanks to them along with fellow bands Death and Atheist, was beginning to be enriched with progressive and jazz elements.  In fact, guitarist Paul Masvidal and drummer Sean Reinert appeared on Death's seminal album Human in 1991.  The band also features my favorite rhythm section of all time in drummer Reinert and bassist Sean Malone who, during Cynic's decade-long hiatus after the release of Focus, also appeared on Aghora's 2000 debut.

A lot of jazz influence can be heard in Cynic's music, with smoothly-phrased, unusually non-modal soloing over chord changes more directional and varied than is typical in metal, syncopated drumming and the warm fretless bass sound.  Also out of character for the Florida scene at the time, Focus featured vocorder-transposed vocals and clean soprano alongside and juxtaposed against the traditional death growls.

Here are two of my favorites from Focus, starting with the closer taken from the album: "How Could I".  It might be the most "metal" song on the album, but it contains plenty of interest.  The intro starts with synthesizer (I don't think it's actually a keyboard, but instead some kind of drum synth) playing a rhythmic pattern, adds a fretless bass counterpoint after a few bars, and then another guitar arpeggiated layer another handful of bars later, growing to the more aggressive and twisty verse at 0:53, which repeats at 1:39 before the chorus at 2:17.  After the chorus, a very jazzy solo break based on the intro opens up at 2:37 before a restatement of the back half of the verse at 2:58 and another chorus at 3:17 before the super cool solo/outro from 3:51 to the fade out.  That outro, to me, feels like an arrival, as though not only the song but the entire album has been building to that final moment of clarity.

And here is a live recording of the band in 2015, playing the opener, entitled "Veil of Maya", from that same album.  It's a terrific performance, but you'll notice that a lot of the backing tracks are piped in, now that the band has reduced in size to the three core members: Paul and the Seans.

#12 - Unexpect

So many weird and wonderful bands come from French-speaking eastern Canada, including prog-thrashers Voivod, avant-death pioneers Gorguts, tech-death speedsters Cryptopsy, all of the above characteristics in the great Martyr, and my favorite of them all from Montreal, avante-garde grab bag Unexpect.  Along with Japan's Sigh, Sweden's Pan-Thy-Monium and California's Mr. Bungle, Unexpect rounds out the four "experimental" metal bands in the top 100, and of the four, they're probably musically the weirdest.  True to their name, their music is characterized by sudden and disorienting changes of direction, both in style and rhythm.  There's a lot of black metal in their sound, and also a lot of Kurt Weill-esque dark cabaret, but one can also hear classical/art nusic, electronica, tech/prog, opera and jazz abruptly and at any time.  The schizophrenic compositions are counterbalanced by incredibly precise execution and, when taken in combination, make for one of (if not the) most impressive bands I've ever heard.

2006's In A Flesh Aquarium is a special album, with one mind-blowing song after another.  As such, it's tough to pick one to share with you.  "Desert Urbania", the first clip included below, is as good a one as any, as it displays their characteristic dichotomy of chaotic composition and pristine performance.  The song opens with solo piano in a slow 4, sparsely accompanied by underwater-sounding guitar squiggles, and slowly built on by the addition of bass and cymbals, followed by drums, and finally the whole rhythm section on some prog whole-note chords at 1:04 for a few seconds.  Then a brief piano interlude at 1:12, during which you get the sense that something terrifying is about to happen.  Six seconds later all hell breaks loose, with the entrance of the entire band, including three vocalists and violin over a suddenly faster tempo and uneven phrases, punctuated by breaks that are somewhere between beatnik jazz and circus music.  It's hard to describe all the wild changes that occur over the following three and a half minutes or so but somehow, they manage to feature everybody in the well-populated band.  There's an awesome hemiola right at 5:00 and then another one at 5:24, which begin the slow wind down to the end as instruments start to drop out until we're left with just the piano again, which sags and slows to the end, like an animatronic creepy clown running out of juice.

Up next is "Summoning Scenes", from the same album, but here performed impressively live in studio for Fearless Music in New York.

#13 - Silent Stream of Godless Elegy

Hailing from Ostrava, Moravia in eastern Czech Republic, Silent Stream of Godless Elegy is the most multifarious act on the top 100, from their wordy name to the large band population.  They're also the only real folk metal band, featuring traditional instruments, folk-inspired melodies and the beautiful and gypsy-like vocals of one of my favorite vocalists, Hanka Hajdová (née Nogolová) from whom you heard earlier in Forgotten Silence.  They've been around for over 20 years already, having formed in 1995.  I first heard them in 2004, initially on "I Would Dance" a terrific example of Slavic folk metal from their album Relic Dances of that year, and immediately delved into their back catalog.

Musically, I'm going to introduce SSOGE as I was introduced to them, with "I Would Dance" from 2004's Relic Dances.  The opening drum setup and characteristic slow, heavy riff featuring the violin and cello, first playing in octaves, and then weaving between one another and together lead into a deeply growled first verse at 0:32 backed by ethereal wordless cleans.  Hanka takes over the spotlight at the chorus at 1:01 with the first, and most simply arranged, chorus.  After an abbreviated recap of the intro, the second verse at 1:41 is like the first with the addition of string embellishment.  The second chorus at 2:09 includes additional vocal parts in harmony with and as accents to the chorus's melody.  Another recap of the intro leads into the string-dominated bridge at 3:07 during which a double time feel accompanies more wordless backing vocals at 3:38.  The final chorus at 3:55 continues over the double-time feel and now includes the string section, the growled vocals and the multiple layered cleans, capping a steady build throughout the song.

Like when I first found them, I'm looking back now at an earlier offering.  This is "Old Women's Dance" from 1998's Behind the Shadows.  It's rawer and lacks Hanka's enchanting vocals, but the use of the strings is still interesting and unique, and the male vocals are varied, enthusiastic and enjoyable.  Plus the song just rocks.

And for fun, a cover of Led Zeppelin's "Kashmir"...

#14 - sHeavy

One generally doesn't think of St. John's, Newfoundland as a hotbed of rock.  That is, until one hears Canada's kings of stoner rock, the mighty sHeavy.  Founded in the mid 90's, sHeavy has steadily released a remarkably consistent string of 10 albums over the past 20 years, each a slab of groovy, sludgy, riff-oriented rock, one great tune after another.  The consistency is even more remarkable given the parade of players who have rolled through the band, as evidenced by this photo:

SHeavy wears their influences on their collective sleeve.  Singer Steve Hennessey bears a clear and uncanny vocal resemblance to early Sabbath-era Ozzy Osbourne, and guitarist Dan Moore's impression of Tony Iommi isn't far behind.  Add to that the fact that the band began life as Green Machine, named for the Kyuss rocker, and you get a pretty good idea of what sHeavy is about musically: lots of driving stoner rock, with a down-tuned, 70's lean.  There's also some psych-rock in there and of course some Sabbath-inspired doom-y metal.  They really are just one great song after another, and adeptly and enthusiastically performed.  Here's the first song I ever heard by them, "Firebird 350", up there with Deep Purple's "Highway Star" and Kyuss's "Green Machine" as one of the three best open road driving songs I know, followed by a complete (and bizarre) live performance from 2005 at the Masonic Temple in St John's, where they set up on the floor in the middle of the "crowd" of 80 or so and knock it out of the park.

#15 - Puya

I first heard Puerto Rica's Puya in 1999 as the very, very first band in that summer's long Ozzfest lineup.  I think the poor guys played at something like 11 in the morning to a small and disinterested audience at the Atlanta show I attended, before an impressive roster of artists including Open Mike favorites System of a Down, Primus and Black Sabbath.  The first thing I noticed when they took the stage: a horn section!  Being a trombonist as well as a long time fan of both metal and 70's horn bands like Chicago, Blood Sweat & Tears and Earth Wind & Fire, I was intrigued.  Unfortunately, as is often the case at rock festivals, the sound was a disaster and I came away unimpressed.  But luckily for me, my friend Jeff, who was at the show with me, picked up their debut album called Fundamental and I got a second chance to hear them.

If one was to stick them in a sub-genre box, it would probably have to be Nu metal, but to leave it at that isn't fair to them or to anyone considering giving them a listen.  Sure they've got some of the hardcore and hip hop elements that are the hallmarks of the genre, but there's also some jazz guitar work, occasional prog chord progressions and phrasing surprises.  And especially a ton of salsa, complete with congas, timbales, horn section and a deeply pocketed groove.  Honestly, I've never heard anyone sound remotely like them, which is surprising because the sound works so well.  Their first full-length album Fundamental is a joy to listen to, and I'm including here the title track, my favorite of a slew of strong offerings.  If you like it, scroll a little further down to hear a live performance of a song from their 2001 follow-up album Union called "Sí Ajá" which, while missing the horn section, has a really enjoyable latin jazz break sandwiched between a crushing metal opening and recap to finish.  And finally, because it's unexpected, a 1998 cover of The Police's "Spirits in the Material World"... in Spanish.