Category: Reviews

LEGADO DE UNA TRAGEDIA “Britania” (Art Gates Records) I have said it countless times before. If you dig deep enough you’ll find bands that few have heard of that deserves your attention. The Spanish scene is full of metal bands of all the sorts that doesn’t get the press they should get because they don’t really reach outside of the Spanish borders. LEGADO DE UNA TRAGEDIA is a band that I hadn’t heard of before this album dropped in on me. What I do hear is a very dramatic musical landscape. It feels like you are a part of a… Continue reading

THERAGON “Where The Stories Begin” (Art Gates Records) I don’t know what it is about power metal that gets me going but I am a huge sucker for a really good power metal album. I don’t get to hear them too often sadly but once I do they are mostly of the highest quality. Spanish THERAGON are power metal. And they are quite good at it too. I sit here and try to figure out what school they mostly remind me of. I have to place them in the Italian school of more dramatic power metal. More so than the… Continue reading

Accept – “Too Mean To Die” (Nuclear Blast Records) Change is no stranger to these Teutonic titans, and indeed, in recent years Accept have seen the loss of bassist Peter Baltes, who was in the band 42 years (!!), leaving guitarist Wolf Hoffmann as the last original member of one of Germany’s most loved metal acts. Wasting no time whatsoever, Hoffmann, who has also been successfully forging a solo career as a neoclassical metal artist, recruited new bassist Martin Motnik (Lucifer (live), Ace Frehley, Gene Simmons Band) but more boldly, expanded Accept into a sextet with the additional of a… Continue reading

Voodoo Circle – “Locked & Loaded” (AFM Records) No messin’ – if you crave pumping, red blooded hard rock then the maestros at Voodoo Circle have it all for you here – and in abundance too I might add! With little to doubt the seasoned talents of founder guitarist Alex Beyrodt (Primal Fear, Silent Force), bassist Mat Sinner (Primal Fear, Sinner), vocalist David Readman (Pink Cream 69) and drummer Markus Kullman (Glenn Hughes), “Locked & Loaded” also features the skills of keyboardist Corvin Bahn (Sascha Paeth’s Masters of Ceremony) and singer Melissa Bonny (Ad Infinitum, Rage Of Light), not forgetting… Continue reading

Dragony – “Viribus Unitis” (Napalm Records) Formed over a decade ago as “The Dragonslayer Project”, “Viribus Unitis” returns this Austrian symphonic power metal band to the roots of their 2011 debut in embracing rock opera once more! Titled after the personal motto of Emperor Franz Joseph I, history takes a different turn under Dragony’s guise in a new concept that sees the Emperor enhanced as a cyber-punk and his wife, the Empress ‘Sisi’, who was in real life assassinated, now resurrected into a demon possessed zombie!!! Thankfully, the music is far less outlandish, if no less flamboyant thanks to an… Continue reading

OKRÜTNIK ”Legion Antychrysta” (Ossuary Records) This one has all the right vibes to be old school. If you like me, remember the 80s when Poland was under the control of communism you might also remember the feeling of hearing Polish metal for the first time. Acts like Turbo, Kat, Imperator and Vader all made an impression to certain degrees. Some are still with me today. Others have fallen. Hearing this album from OKRÜTNIK is almost like being taken back to the 80s. What I like is that there is a new generation that still hold the old flame alive. This… Continue reading

SHADOW WARROR “Cyberlblade” (Ossuary Records) I don’t know why I at first thought that this was a Japanese heavy metal band. I just got that feeling from them. But the fact is that this is a Polish classic heavy metal band. And I love classic heavy metal. It took me a while to get my head around the music of SHADOW WARRIOR but once I got accustomed to them not being Japanese I could start enjoying the music. If melody driven heavy metal is your thing and you like me is kinda trapped in the 80s still, this might appeal… Continue reading

IRON FLESH “Summoning The Putrid” (Grand Dane Records) “Swedish old skull death metal from France”. Can it get any better? Not to my ears. Swedish old school death metal is great no matter where the band come from. IRON FLESH formed as a one-man band in 2017 but soon decided to start playing live. Listening to this is like hearing a mix of Entombed and Grave. That heavy, sluggish riffing that is so connected with these two bands. As cool as it is to hear old school Swedish death metal as hard is it to get it totally right. If… Continue reading

HELL:ON “Scythian Stamm” () I don’t remember the first time I heard HELL:ON but judging from the archive I first heard them back in 2011. I have since then interviewed them a couple of times and reviewed a couple of their records too. The last one being the split they did with Pripjat. I apparently liked what I heard in the past and I see no reason to change my opinion with this new one. This is what I would like to describe as deathrash. A mix of death and thrash metal where you don’t know where one ends and… Continue reading

PIGSTY “Pig Blood” (Bizarre Leprous Productions) I am a horror movie fan but I gotta admit that I am not the greatest fan of the Omen movies. I have watched all I think but after having seen The Exorcist and RoseMary’s Baby it didn’t do too much for me. Sure, a child is always scary in horror movies. Czech PIGSTY seems to have based their whole album “Pig Blood” on the Omen movie. Not that you can really tell from their death/grind/gore. I am not the biggest connoisseur of this kind but I gotta admit that I like what I… Continue reading