So is everything a nameless lie? Who, my god, am I?

I've been trying to figure out something. So, back in 1998, this label called Holy Records puts out a tribute album to one of my favourite bands - Paradise Lost. I got it pretty soon after it came out, and I played once - yes, just the once - and thought to myself 'what the fuck did I just listen to?', I found it to be that bad. It was full of really weird covers, and some worked very well, like Oprhaned Land's version of 'Mercy', and On Thorns I Lay's version of 'True Belief', but pretty much everything else was just horrid. I hated, hated, hated everything else there, pretty much. Insofar as it depended on me, I'd never - ever - listen to one of those bands again.

So what I'm trying is where I was at that time, late '98. And, I mean, I was like halfway through an unhappy relationship, my sex life was reduced to one, maybe two moments of bad sex, but other than that... I was pretty content in life. Sure, I was in a going nowhere fast relationship, but things were pretty much OK. So I really didn't have any reason to really hate this songs so much, and I wonder why I did.

Unfortunately, I forgot to write down my initial thoughts on a few of these bands and how I rated the album, so I'm going from memory here.

Argile - 'Spleen Angel'
I had no idea this band was a side project from another band to be featured here. And I even thought the band was called 'Argyle' and not 'Argile'. I actually really liked this one - Metal, yes, but also some neo-classical and acoustic bits. Let's start with a 7/10

Misanthrope - 'Embrasement'

So this is the band that is the main project from the Argile fellas. Knew them by name, and to be honest - I found them to be a lot less interesting than Argile. I'll give this a generous 6/10

Legenda - 'Eclipse'

A few seconds in, I was sure I wasn't going to enjoy this - at all. 'Shit, more Black Metal?', but soon after I started really enjoying the record. Way back when, I held this CD in my hands countless times, and I always ended up choosing something else other than this. This was a fun listen, it gets a good 7.5/10 

Godsend - 'A Wayfarer's Tears'
Jesus, all I can remember about this album was the singer's nasally voice. It was metal, but not really? Something not bad, but not good either, with some doom-y elements to it. I don't know. I really don't. Let's just give it a 5/10

Yearning - 'Merging Into Landscapes'

So... there's this genre called 'Beauty and the Beast', this type of Gothic Metal with a girl singing and a guy doing harsh/clean vocals. And what's this? Maybe 'The Really Annoying Beauty, The Beast and The Slightly Annoying Beast'. I don't think I disliked this, but neither did it leave such an impression that would warrant a really good rating. It gets a 6.5/10

S.U.P. - 'Room Seven'

I always thought that this band was either a Prog Metal band or some weird Metal/Techno combo thing.

It's true that I didn't love everything here - I remember being thoroughly unimpressed by the first few songs. And sometime they'd weirdly remind me of Nirvana, a band I absolutely loathe. But here and there they had some really, really great songs. I'll give it a worthy 7/10

Stille Volk - 'Nueit De Sabbat'

It's 2009 and the girl who I was dating at the time - and again, this was at the halfway point of a painful and complicated relationship - visits me in London, where I was living at the time. We go to Camden Market, and in this wee jewelry store, they were playing something I was sure I knew what was. So I asks the guy who was working there and he tells it was Stille Volk. This album came out in 2009 and I hoped it might sound familiar - but it doesn't, not one bit.

This is folk/celtic/medieval music, somewhat in the vein of In Extremo or Saltatio Mortis and even though I have nothing against this kind of music, it doesn't do much for me either. Not bad at all, though. I'll give it a 7/10

Things get tougher next week. Tune in to the same Bat-Time, same Bat-Channel and you'll see what's what.