MARA – Sword of Vengeance

RELEASE YEAR: 2025BAND URL: https://lnk.to/swordofvengeance The Swedish horde known as Mara impressed this scribe greatly with their Loka Mær offering from 2022 (also released by the ever-reliable Immortal Frost Productions), and Sword of Vengeance, which is their fifth full-length assault overall, sounds like the natural successor to what came before, which is a good thing as you…

FLOTSAM AND JETSAM – I Am The Weapon

RELEASE YEAR: 2024 BAND URL: https://www.flotstildeath.com/ For the past three albums, the eponymous²⁰¹⁶, The End Of Chaos²⁰¹⁹ and Blood In The Water²⁰²¹, the Phoenix Arizonian power thrash heavy metal outfit Flotsam And Jetsam have been on a roll with fantastic records full of heavy metal anthems that make Metallica, Megadeth and even Anthrax sound outdated…

ZAKULA – White Forest Reign Lullabies

RELEASE YEAR: 2024 BAND URL: https://zakula.bandcamp.com/ In the movie “La La Land”, Keith (John Legend), tells his bandmate and friend, Sebastian Wilder (Ryan Gosling), essentially, that jazz is dying because the latter keeps it too traditional without opening himself for new ideas. How often true of heavy metal, how silly it sometimes sounds in the…

ALICE COOPER – The Revenge of Alice Cooper

RELEASE YEAR: 2025BAND URL: https://alicecooper.lnk.to/RevengePR The phrase “highly anticipated” does not quite do this one justice in that we are talking about a marvelous new opus by the original Alice Cooper group – the first one in fifty years no less. Excited? You should be as this one is a real belter in more ways than…

WHISPERS OF GRANITE – Liquid Stone

RELEASE YEAR: 2025BAND URL: https://whispersofgranite.bandcamp.com/album/liquid-stone What a marvelous musical treat Liquid Stone is. Whispers of Granite consists of two immensely skilled individuals, namely Norwegian vocalist and vocal composer Trude Eidtang and German keyboardist and composer Andreas Hack, and this debut offering of theirs is a superb example of how to weave art rock, prog, brooding folk…

ALL MEN UNTO ME – Requiem

RELEASE YEAR: 2025BAND URL: https://linktr.ee/allmenuntome Once in a while one encounters and experiences an album that transcends genres and conventions while also being transcendental. All Men Unto Me, which is a swirling mass of pitch-black musical brilliance spawned by the man known as Rylan Gleave, is unarguably one of the most unique and moving outputs we…

ISILIEL – Moonbow Rebellion

Isiliel is the solo project of Himari Tsukishiro – known from her work with Necronomidol. With Isiliel, she’s built a sound that blends black metal, power metal, gothic atmosphere, and synth-heavy idol pop. Her debut set the foundation – Moonbow Rebellion builds on it with sharper production, more dynamic arrangements, and a stronger sense of…

TONS OF ROCK 2025 – Day 4

Full photo galleries – including a lot of shots from Jinjer and Dark Angel moshpits and crowdsurfing Photos and Text by Andrea Chirulescu and Jonathan Mazin A cool Saturday morning after a rainy night in Oslo was a decent start for the last bus trip up to Ekeberg. This last Saturday in June hosted a…

TONS OF ROCK 2025 – Day 3

Full photo galleries from Day 3: Photos by Andrea Chirulescu and Jonathan Mazin Text by Andrea Chirulescu and Jonathan Mazin One nice thing with this year’s Tons of Rock edition was that it didn’t really have any precipitation. Now I can’t really recall on which day some people brought a poncho with them and some…

TONS OF ROCK 2025 – Day 2 Review

Photo galleries from day 2 at Tons of Rock 2025 can be found here Photos by Andrea Chirulescu & Jonathan Mazin Text by Andrea Chirulescu One new item on the agenda – besides the 4th stage – for this year’s Tons of Rock was the organized Black Metal Bus Sightseeing. Certainly borrowed from Inferno festival,…

MY SILENT WAKE – Lost In Memories, Lost In Grief

RELEASE YEAR: 2024 BAND URL: https://mysilentwake1.bandcamp.com/ As melodic death doom metal is hands down my all time favorite genre which fits my complex internal psychology like a glove, I am always on the look out for the finest representatives thereof. Naturally, the so called Peaceville Trinity (Anathema, My Dying Bride, Paradise Lost) would be the…

TONS OF ROCK 2025 – Day 1 Review

Full photo galleries can be found at the link below. Photos: Andrea Chirulescu/Jonathan MazinText: Andrea Chirulescu & Jonathan Mazin Having a big, world class festival in your town is something one kinda gets used to by now and I feel like somehow the days and weeks leading up to it have become more exciting with…

TARJA – Circus Life

RELEASE YEAR: 2025BAND URL: https://tarjaturunen.com/circus-life/ The talented Tarja Turunen recently released this 18-track live offering via earMUSIC titled Circus Life in the shape of a great-looking 2CD/Blu Ray set, and this is a rather interesting symphonic metal release for a number of different reasons. Recorded in Bucharest just a couple of months shy of the Covid-19…

LORENTZEN – Leave Nobody Behind

RELEASE YEAR: 2025BAND URL: https://apollonrecords.no/products/lorentzen-leave-nobody-behind-cd Apollon Records were kind enough to hand me a copy of Leave Nobody Behind, which was composed and crafted by the talented Eivind Lorentzen (ex-Gentle Knife, Oldenborre, and Synsbedragerne), and the idea behind the album and lyrics seemed a rather interesting and intriguing one on paper. Floating somewhere between atmospheric prog,…

SEPULCHRAL CURSE – Abhorrent Dimensions

RELEASE YEAR: 2024 BAND URL: https://sepulchralcurse.bandcamp.com/ After my glowing review of Sepulchral Curse’s debut, Only Ashes Remain²⁰²⁰, I anticipated even greater things to come from these Finnish blackened death metallers on their follow up and, sure enough, Abhorrent Dimensions²⁰²³, released on CD on October 27th 2 years ago however, hear me out, on limited edition…

FRANCIS ROSSI – The Way We Were Vol. 1

RELEASE YEAR: 2025BAND URL: https://www.francisrossi.com/ Francis Rossi of Status Quo fame recently released this seventeen-track compilation of various demo versions and alternate takes – many of which relate to his work with and songwriting contribution to the aforementioned Quo – and it is a rather intriguing album in many respects. Some of the ideas presented on…

WINGLESS – Ascension

RELEASE YEAR: 2024BAND URL: https://wingless.bandcamp.com/ While Nonconform²⁰²¹ (via Selfmadegod Records) was a very good album from this Polish death metal ensemble, my review was hopeful of the follow up to take more risks in order to distinguish Wingless from Behemoths, Azaraths and Vaders of my native land on one hand, and from the way Malevent…

SUIDAKRA – Darkanakrad

RELEASE YEAR: 2024 BAND URL: https://www.suidakra.com/ Appearances can be deceiving and many a war has been founded on such deception. Take the name for the band: Suidakra, even typecast weirdly as SuidAkrA. Is that like a fancy name for suicide, such as harakiri (male) or seppuku (female) shame/honor self-killing? Or is it a name of…

HELHEIM – HrabnaR / Ad vesa

RELEASE YEAR: 2025BAND URL: https://helheim.bandcamp.com/album/hrabnar-ad-vesa It is a thrillingly peculiar thing when one receives a promotional disc for a new album by Viking metal legends Helheim in the sense that you never quite know to expect from them except for all-out quality, which is a great thing, because these veterans never fail to amaze this scribe…

JON ANDERSON AND THE BAND GEEKS – Live – Perpetual Change

RELEASE YEAR: 2025BAND URL: https://www.jonanderson.com/ None other than the legendary and inimitable Jon Anderson assembled a group a few years ago endearingly named the Band Geeks and recorded something akin to a Yes fan’s wet dream in the shape of this superb-sounding live album. A collection of epics and classics by Yes sure sounds good, does…

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