Lots of new albums released at summer's end, and most of them are worth some serious interest. The ones that caught my attention were Megadeth- Endgame, Sonata Arctica- The Days of Grays, Krypteria- My Fatal Kiss, and Cain's Offering- Gather the Faithful.

Of course you have to live in a cave to have not heard of Megadeth's new release, Endgame, which many say tops Metallica's Death Magnetic. I would have to agree. Though I love Metallica, this album is lyrically superior and with more technical, breakneck solos. Highlights include the opening instrumental "Dialectic Chaos", the album's title track "Endgame"; "The Right to Go Insane", "How the Story Ends" and "This Day We Fight!". "Head Crusher", which many say is the best song on the album, is sort of annoying in its predictable lyrics, but the guitar work is stunning. A very good album, though United Abominations is still my favorite.

Though I was very happy with Megadeth's release, I cared much more about Sonata Arctica, my second favorite band. With their previous two releases they began incorporating more progressive metal elements, and many fans hated this. I really loved the complexity of Unia, though it was not quite as catchy and would not grow on me like previous albums would, save the song "Caleb." The Days of Grays is certainly not Sonata's best release ever- that would probably go to Winterheart's Guild. This is due to a few mediocre songs, like "The Truth is Out There" and one awful song, "Zeroes". The songs were extremely complex, with much more orchestral elements, vocal distortion, screaming, unstable rhythms, and more screaming. One thing I detested about the album was the lack of intros- many songs began with vocals almost instantly. In my opinion, the song "Juliet", though over-emotional, was lyrically stunning and really pulled together in the outro. I would say this is their second best calm song, behind Shamandalie. "Deathaura", the eight-minute epic, was by far the greatest track on the album. It was similar to White Pearl, Black Oceans, but with more classical elements. "Flag In The Ground" was their back-to-their-roots song, since it was just a reworking of a song they had written for an early single. The guitar work on this one is the best. "No Dream Can Heal a Broken Heart" featured Johanna Kurkela, whose female vocals really brought the song to another level. The lyrics were very nice, and this song was very memorable. "Everything Fades To Gray" really was just a calm piano tune that had no power behind it. It was a nice, quiet song that was worth listening to. Other highlights included "The Last Amazing Grays," "Breathing" and "In The Dark" (a bonus track).

Deathaura

Krypteria is an emerging female-fronted symphonic metal band. They recently released My Fatal Kiss. In lack of a better word, they do have some "poppyness" to them. This can either make their songs flow nicely and be catchy, or they can suck. The latter applies to this album, almost entirely. In other words, I was disappointed. Their previous album, Bloodangel's Cry, which was awesome, incorporated a Latin choir, which elevated their songs. This choir is distorted and watered down, sounding absolutely terrible. The only half-decent song is "Ignition", but it gets annoying after listening to it more than once. DO NOT WANT.

Being a fan of Sonata and Stratovarius, I really was looking forward to the power metal "supergroup" Cain's Offering. Jani Liimatainen from Sonata and Timo Kotipelto from Stratovarius are both in this band, and released the album Gather The Faithful in late August. I was very much impressed with the album, despite the overall theme of "let's see how fast we can play before our fan's heads explode". Their songs do have some elements of symphonic metal, especially the title track, the instrumental "Gather the Faithful." Their lyrics are not super-corny like I expected, which mainly applies to the song "Oceans of Regret", my personal favorite. Overall very good.

Oceans of Regret

In other unrelated stuff, Scribblenauts got boring. In like a week. Wow. Great idea, but there are too many "super-words" that ALWAYS work- "Halberd" "Pegasus" "Grenade Launcher" "God" etc. Muramasa: The Demon Blade is absolutely stunning. Get it if you have a soul.
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And now I am pissed at Tom Fulp. Resetting the scout tree and elimianting artists like me who were lucky enough to get scouted once. Hurray.

Instead of being a child about this and making a "goodbye NG" news post which flood in every day, I will keep it short and sweet- I feel hated on this site and the vast majority of people are morons.