VENUE: StereoDATE: 30.07.2024 ORGANIZER: Dark Essence Records / Beyond the GatesPHOTOGRAPHER: J. NepperPhotos copyrights belong to the photographer. No unauthorized usage allowed. Please contact photographer if you wish to reuse images in any context. The ever-reliable purveyors of quality music known as Dark Essence Records, one of the world’s premier metal-related labels, are not merely…
RELEASE YEAR: 2024 BAND URL: https://maddermortem.bandcamp.com/album/old-eyes-new-heart Is there even any point in trying to categorize or label the unique sound conjured up by one of Norway’s most enticing musical outfits, namely Madder Mortem? Thirty years into their career and they still manage to amaze and excite me – how awesome is that?! Incorporating traits from doom…
RELEASE YEAR: 2023 BAND URL: https://www.facebook.com/secretsphere The Italian power metal outfit Secret Sphere rarely fails to impress me, and Blackened Heartbeat sees them deliver their most memorable opus to date. I cannot recall them ever having written such catchy and pleasing tunes as the ones that this LP is comprised off, and you get rip-roaring metal…
RELEASE YEAR: 2023 BAND URL: https://adarkhalo.bandcamp.com/ As Fear Factory gets its second breath after losing the original extraordinary vocalist Burton C. Bell, numerous bands crop up inspired by Fear Factory’s phenomenal combination of metal, industrial and electronics they dubbed cybermetal. Then, of course, some additional genre melding is expected, nü metal riff here, progressive passage…
RELEASE YEAR: 2023 BAND URL: https://www.facebook.com/falsememoriesband The Italian dark metal quintet known as False Memories have been keeping busy these past couple of years, and it feels like only yesterday that I reviewed their last opus, the gloomy The Last Night of Fall. Hybrid Ego System, which is their third full-length record, pretty much picks up…
RELEASE YEAR: 2023 BAND URL: https://greenlabyrinth.net/ The Swiss outfit known as Green Labyrinth was a completely new discovery but a welcome one for me as their eclectic take on highly dramatic and epic prog metal suits my mood these days. As I stated before, this primarily falls within the progressive metal sphere, but one could make…
RELEASE YEAR: 2023 BAND URL: https://www.facebook.com/ArchonAngelBand/ This International constellation of musicians was completely new to me and I had never come across their name prevoiusly, but they play and sound like veterans, which makes me curious as to what their previous album named Fallen from 2020 is like. Anyway, we shall focus on the latest effort…
RELEASE YEAR: 2023 BAND URL: https://www.facebook.com/MAGNUSKARLSSONOFFICIAL/ Magnus Karlsson (Primal Fear) is undoubtedly a gifted musician and an experienced songwriter with a knack for crafting huge-sounding, epic, and positively bombastic tunes with a symphonic edge to them. This pretty much applies to every band and project of his, not least the interesting Free Fall endeavor whose previous…
RELEASE YEAR: 2023 BAND URL: https://www.facebook.com/infiniteanddivine/ This scribe was quite enamored with the debut album titled Silver Lining by the Swedish outfit Infinite & Divine that came out a couple of years ago, which ticked a lot of boxes for me. So naturally, I was hoping for more of the same and some classy, memorable symphonic-inspired…
RELEASE YEAR: 2022 BAND URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMifUtcBLBs The two skilled vocalists that are Anette Olzon (ex-Nightwish) and Russell Allen (Symphony X) have teamed up with multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, and producer Magnus Karlsson for another epic slab of melodic metal full of grandeur and lofty ideas. Army of Dreamers is essentially huge-sounding symphonic metal swathed in sweeping keyboards, soaring…
RELEASE YEAR: 2022 BAND URL: https://www.facebook.com/erinyesmetal/ The Erinyes is a rather interesting new project by Frontiers Records in that its three female vocalists deliver some divine melodies and harmonies on top of a thick blanket of epic-sounding power metal, or symphonic metal, if you will. Musically, everything holds up well without the songs necessarily being outright…
RELEASE YEAR: 2022BAND URL: https://www.instagram.com/ultimagrace/ Originally released in Japan back in March this year, the good people at Frontiers Records have now made sure that it is available globally, which is something that a lot of power metal fans and devotees in Europe and US will be most pleased with, I suspect. Featuring the talented…
RELEASE YEAR: 2022 BAND URL: https://facebook.com/profile.phpid=100063610741197 I wish there was a God, I’d pray for salvation…If somehow, I could believe, that there was a saviour then maybe this life I lead would be less filled with sin. If there’s no god, no light at the end…then tell me what’s the meaning of it all (Save…
RELEASE YEAR: 2022 BAND URL: https://open.spotify.com/artist/3YyILgRcUSxqmjStt8DZPg Symphonic goth-inspired metal from Italy courtesy of the quintet named LunariaN is what we have here, and this is a rather competent and solid piece of work where the vocals of Aylin (Trail of Tears, ex-Sirenia) serve as the highlight throughout. While all the usual ingredients such as symphonic keyboards,…
