Reviews
Elnordia came from Russia, and they are about to make a very good impression in the European music scene from their first album “Insight”. “Insight” is a Mixture of Septic Flesh and Crematory with many influences from Theater Of Tragedy and Within Temptation. The album contains 9 tracks of music quality equal to Crematory, with brutal and in specific parts clean male vocals and many melodic guitar lines that can easily stick in your mind. The Female Vocals are in the vain of Sharon from Within Temptation.
\r\nDepressed\r\nMode is from Finland and play Funeral Doom as they state, something about I\r\ntotally disagree. I also disagree with the phenomenon of “labeling” the music, but once they labeled\r\ntheir own music, I have no choice but to disagree with their musical identity.\r\n
For many years now the American Funeral Doom band Evoken can easily be considered as one of the leading Funeral Doom bands in the Scene and this is a fair fact. This is the 4th album for Evoken entitled “A Caress Of The Void” and with this one the band came to claim the scene’s best act. I think that bands like My Dying Bride for example would love to have this album in their back catalogue.
\r\nMagdalene come from Texas and are now taking their first steps\r\nin the music field. Their sound and general style bring s into mind the Italian\r\nAtmospheric scene like Lacuna\r\nCoil or the Dutch The Gathering. This is the first Ep of the band\r\nand it shows the band has the urge to do more and more with more work. Magdalene is a piece of work good enough to give it a\r\nchance and includes 4 tracks.
\r\nThis album has been released in the past two years ago only this time the release jas been made through Frontiers Records and so we are presenting it with a small delay. In Tenebra is the debut album of the Italians Aleph who are a quite peculiar case because if you look around for the reviews they’ve received you’ll see people loving them and you’ll see people hating them. In 2006 Aleph were voted band of the year in the Italian Metal Hammer. My personal opinion is that we have to deal with an interesting band.
\r\nThere are some people whose visions, aspirations, the need for creation and love for music drive them as a locomotive force in\r\norder to achieve their goals.
This particular album is a compilation of older recordings of the band, live performances and includes 15 tracks. The compilation of the tracks is quite good however some of the radio versions like “Soul Society”, “The Haunting” and “March of Mephisto”, could have been left out. Also the ballads “One day”, bonus in the Japanese version of “Siege Perilous”, and “Can you Remember” recorded live aren’t tracks which add up to the result of this release.
Seven Witches return with a new album which differs a lot from their prior release as the plethora of the modern elements have been taken out of the band’s sound and they return to their familiar style. Alan Tecchio (Hades/Watchtower) is once more in the vocals and Joey Vera (Armored Saint/Fates Warning, Anthrax) is co operating with Kevin Bolembach (Non Fiction) and Clint Arent (Pain Museum’s/ Teos) in the bass. The concept of the album is that of the 7 deadly sins according to Mahatma Gandhi, which were considered dangerous for mankind.
When Death Metal meets technicality and melody meets emotion, then the result is no other than The Craving! Kenos come from Italy and up till now have released a MCD (Rigor Mortis - 2002), a full length album (Intersection - 2004), while The Craving is their new album and undoubtedly their best. The band offer’s us 10 tracks of immaculate Progressive Death Metal within which we can clearly see the influences of other styles and some Gothic elements, especially in the fourth track of the album called The Icon.
\r\nAzrael is a Spanish band and this is their fifth album. From what I read about them because their name was totally unknown to me they are actually a really old band, in fact they exist since 1991.Their music is melodic heavy metal mostly influenced by ‘80s but there are lots of hard rock elements crafted into their functional capability, many progressive touches, even some thrash metal passages now and then which for me was and the most interesting thing about their sound.