Reviews
Seriously now, what’s wrong with the Italian scene? They seem to have abandoned their well-known power metal genre and began to play classic heavy metal, feeling a bit nostalgic about this music’s past. Ok there are some very decent albums like that of “Frozen Tears” that I reviewed a few days ago, but enough’s enough.
\r\nIt’s like a devastating earthquake or more like a bomber flying over leveling the place with a hail of bullets. I can’t think of something more appropriate to describe what I’ve just listened to. Well some of you might question, what exactly is this kind of music described as a “hail of bullets”?
\r\nMalicious Silence was a big surprise to me; their promo cd is one of the best ones that we have received lately! The band comes from Lamia (Greece) and their cd, entitled "Promo 2009", contains three songs. What they sound like? Well, it’s raw, massive and thunderous death metal!
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\r\nThe band TOJA was new to me till now, but I have to say that I got disappointed after listening to “Train Of Life”. This is the third album from the Germans, via Avenue of Allies. The info sheet refers to Kamelot and Masterplan among others, as this cd should appeal to their fans. This reference, though, has nothing to do with the way this are in this album.
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\r\nCODE ARE BACK\r\n \r\n
\r\nBritish Blacksters - Code - are back with their second full length album.The band has managed to release their second work with the help of mr.Adrian Erlandsson(session drummer) and also managed to find a new session drummer for their concerts.\r\n
\r\nAnother hard rock band hailing from Sweden, knocks our back door with their debut album "Bad Habit Romance". The Swedish seem to be serious on making a tradition of themselves in making bands that play top-quality hard rock and make truely qualitive albums. In the case of Innocent Rosie, things are simple; these guys didn’t make a name of themselves by accident, luck or external help, they fully deserve every positive critic they’ve got until now for the work they did on "Bad Habit Romance".\r\n
Many of us, including myself, are nagging about new bands directly copying ideas, riffs, lyrics etc from legends of the past as Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Metallica and so on something which ends in having albums that head direct for the trash bin as they’re just a sacrilege to our Heavy Metal heritage. Bands like the ones I mentioned didn’t copy Beatles, Uriah Heep, Led Zeppelin, The Who, Black Sabbath, Jimi Hendrix or other legends of their own teenagehood.
In a time where we have to dig really deep to find a descent band playing pure Heavy Metal, here come “Frozen Tears” to remind us that there are bands out there who don’t play progressive or metalcore intead they honor their root paying a tribute by reproducing the sound of all the bands that most of us grew up with. Some may call them “Retro freaks”...music is evolving ...and all these crap, you know what? Sometimes it’s better to hold your ground and if this means that you should be left behind, so be it.
\r\nBloodline Severed are an American band serving melodic death metal and with their debut album “Visions Revealed” they seem to claim some space among the masters like “Trivium” and “Lamb of God”. So what we’ve got here is a mixture of modern melodic death/thrash through a very good production and some really nice compositions varying rhythmically from mid-tempo to high speed dynamites.