December 1998

Welcome to this weeks episode of Heavy Metal History!

Here we are the final episode covering 1998, the year has seen the entire genre change and blow up to such epic proportions. The new millennium will change things even further, but we arent there yet!

December of 1998 is the month where barely any records get released because one of two things happen, either it gets forgotten by the next year, or its not out long enough at the end of the year for people to give it a chance and these records are no exception.

Nightwish releases their most experimental album with “Oceanborn” Trail of Tears put out a masterful funeral doom ladened record.

Ulver completely changes genres which causes them to be dropped from Century Media. By releasing this album it shows Ulver’s true musicianship and experimental side, which unfortunately alienated a lot of their original fans who only wanted a black metal album, but the band didn’t want to make that kind of music anymore and have since left the genre behind.

Extol, a band from Sweden meshes an extreme style of music with the antithesis of what its about, being one of the first christian black metal bands, yes, you read that right…and finally I close out the episode with 2 addendum records that were omitted while doing research earlier in the year.

We've had quite a year and we cant thank you all enough for listening and supporting us and what we do! We hope 2019 we can bring you even more interviews, get even more insight from the bands about their records and even more listeners from that! Look for our upcoming End of Year list episode as well. December, just like November only saw a handful of releases from bands. We got Christian infused Black Metal, a once Black Metal band make an album out of and inspired by a piece of literature and some Gothic Metal releases. Thanks for listening!

Albums we discussed:

• Nightwish – “Oceanborn”
• Trail of Tears – “Disclosure in Red”
• Ulver – “Themes from William Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell”
• Extol – “Burial”
• Benediction - “Grind Bastard”
• Dawn - “Slaughtersun”

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