15 studio albums and 35 years as a band, there’s something to be said for the steadiness of Danish metal band Pretty Maids. "Kingmaker" is their latest record, delivering another 11 songs of melodic metal chock full of catchy musical hooks and memorable, easy on the ear choruses. There’s always a few gems that stand…
Due to a traffic accident I didn’t get there in time to watch Kringa. But Reveal revealed that they are what I’d call an amateurish version of Negative Plane. There were several great parts, but could somebody do a voice operation on the vocalist? You need to have a vocal that fits the music, and…
Containing two of the premiere vocalists in the melodic metal business with Olaf Meyer (ex-Luca Turilli, ex-Dionysus) and Herbie Langhans (Avantasia, Sinbreed), Symphonity return after an eight-year absence for this second album "King of Persia". Perfectly understandable, especially given the sudden death of bassist Tomas Celechovsky in June of 2012 which took some time to…
Black Viper was a charming meeting with a demo band. Speed/heavy metal can be all fine at times, but to these ears the music becomes too monotonous. Add to this a vocal that is not my cup of metal tea. High pitched screams can be all great when you’re King Diamond, but that’s about it.…
Riding that fine line between modern aggressive groove metal and melodic death metal, Australia’s Naberus sign to Eclipse Records and release their second full-length "The Lost Reveries". What this means to the listener is you will feel like you are taking in a current version of In Flames one moment for the choruses, and then…
Employing three members for the clean and harsh vocals, Calgary’s Illyrian are a potent thrash quartet with progressive, death, and musically-inclined aspects to their style on the oddly named debut full-length "Round 2: Fight!". Hopping about in the Bay Area meets new school mold, "Walking in Sunshine", "Chaotic Neutral", and "Technodrone" are standouts if you…
"Let Me Feel Your Power" is another double disc of live shows from the veteran traditional metal band Saxon. Capturing shows from Germany and the USA, you get the energy resonating through your speakers from the stage – a solid mixture of older and newer cuts spanning their five decades as recording artists. Only privy…
Seventeen years after it originally crawled from the abyss, Moribund serves up a reissue of the famous sophomore album from this Finnish juggernaut. As far as I can tell the mixing and engineering are the same and only the artwork and liner notes are any different. No bonus tracks or anything of the sort are…
Up next we have this debut full length from Finnish black metal act Kyy. The first thing to say is that this is far from the normal Finnish output for this genre, in terms of sound, production and approach. Kyy follow a ritualistic but also rocking pathway that brings the Watain of a decade ago…
Featuring members or ex-members of Goreaphobia, Incantation, Disma, Funebrarum, and Kalopsia, Ruinous hail from New Jersey and deal out the death metal brutality on their debut full-length "Graves of Ceaseless Death". Tremolo-picking signals opener "The Tombs of Blasphemy" in crushing Unleashed-like evilness, while dirty bass grooves punctuate the d-beat driven follow up "Transfixed on the…
The first solo album from guitarist/vocalist Kai Hansen, "XXX: Three Decades in Metal" is a labor of love. Featuring a core band of Heaven Shall Burn bassist Alex Dietz, Carcass drummer Daniel Wilding and second guitarist Eike Freese, plus of course some of his friends in the metal scene as special guests, this is a…
I admit that as excellent as Ulcerate’s last album, "Vermis", was I had serious doubts they would be able to match it, let alone surpass it. "Vermis" was a perfect death metal masterpiece. And that is why I can’t believe how easily "Shrines of Paralysis" outclasses it in complexity, yes, but in catchiness. Whereas every…
Florida power/progressive metal trio Skyliner return for a second full-length "Condition Black", another hour-long odyssey into terrain that combines Maiden/ Running Wild gallops and cultural musical hooks with occasional extreme nuances to flesh out the ideas. Guitarist Jake Becker has a baritone range that vocally gives "Too Many Voices" and the Iron Savior-ish closer "Your…
The prog rock scene in and around Bergen is thriving these days, and thanks to Karisma Records I have had the pleasure of acquainting myself with quite a few interesting bands that may be said to either belong to or move along the periphery of the aforementioned genre and scene. Shaman Elephant is no exception…
Truth be told, I approached this brand new 78-minute opus by Metallica rather carefully and with some trepidation. After all, the last few decades have not exactly been kind to the band, if you ask me, and my expectations to this double album of theirs were pretty low. "St. Anger" was a catastrophe. "Death Magnetic"…
The fifth studio album for Swedish AOR/melodic rock act Niva "Atmospherical" digs a little deeper into a heavier stance to diversify things a bit from previous discography. Perfectly understandable, given drummer/ guitarist Lars Chriss work with Lion’s Share – which is where vocalist Tony Niva teamed up with Lars for 2001’s "Entrance" effort. Fear not…
The 1980’s… a period of shaping my music tastes, adolescence and teen years coming together at a point in time when we didn’t have instant communication, the internet, or even access to our record collections at the click of a button. As such, my first experiences in ‘heavy’ music per se were with the burgeoning…
A stop-gap release to introduce latest vocalist Elina Siirala into the fold, "Fires in the North" consists of the title track in electric and acoustic forms, plus three 2016 versions of songs from last year’s "King of Kings" album with fresh vocals. The symphonic metal quintet deliver a commercial, mid-tempo offering that contains smooth, angelic…
To those who grew up in the 80’s wishing to learn more about the metal underground, the Metal Blade compilation series Metal Massacre would be our sonic soundtrack to discover new artists, especially in the burgeoning traditional, power, speed, doom, and thrash genres. October 31 feels the time is right to put their spin on…
One of the success stories of the modern age of hard rock pertains to Australia’s Airbourne. Taking high energy, quick hitting material cut from the AC/DC mold, they’ve sold hundreds of thousands of albums and moved tickets live globally as people clamor for more, more, more. "Breakin’ Outta Hell" is the fourth studio album, and…
