Tony Holemans.

Striker is not exactly a new name in the Metal scene, seeing as bands with that name go back to the early '80s in the US, first an early Power Metal act which only left us a 1982 single before splitting up, then a Heavy Metal band from Florida which gave us a single in 1985. In the late '80s a Heavy Metal act came from Amberg (Bavaria) in Germany (they had a first run from 1988 to 2005, and then regrouped in 2010). 2009 saw the formation of an Austrian Thrash Metal act, but their status is currently uncertain...and then there was also a Hard Rock act from Seattle!

Hailing from London, UK, Steak was founded in 2010 by a foursome of musicians who took musical influences from the greater bands in the Stoner Rock, Desert Rock, and Fuzz Rock genres.

Founded at the end of 2002 as a Progressive Rock trio, this Lozère based French band (actually, they're from Marvejols in the South of France, a town situated squarely in the middle between Clermond-Ferrand and Montpellier – in effect, some 174 km by road from Montpellier, by way of Millau) recorded an album entitled N'Importe Où..., and then fell into oblivion, as first the bassist and then the guitarist successively left the band. End of the story for those guys...!

Since 2008, a Columbus based musician known only as Cloudkicker has been releasing instrumental Post-Rock/ Prog Rock-Metal material (2008's The Discovery and The Map Is Not The Territory; 2009's Portmanteau; 2010's Beacons and ]]][[[; 2011's Let Yourself Be Huge and Loop; 2012's Fade, and 2013's Subsume – some of which were EP's, others full-lengths) which he made available for free download through the internet.

With the intent of making Pop-oriented music with heavy guitars, Michiel Korsten, Lars Geukens, Gert-Jan Stehouwer and Ferry van der Woude founded this Weerter-based (Rotterdam area) Dutch band in 2010.

Hailing from Hildesheim in Germany, Kalamata is a relatively young instrumental band founded in 2013.

Hum, the name of this Belgian “Hard Rock” act from the Limburg province sounded rather familiar to me, so I thought that maybe I'd come in touch with the quintet through a previous release and so, after having browsed through the info sheet we were sent along with the physical copy of this album, and having found that the guys indeed had a first album out in 2012, I checked all my reviews for that year...and the following half year, because sometimes stuff gets to us a bit later. All in vain, because trace of a previous encounter with the band was non-existent.

We recently got sent the second release of Belgium's own “Alternative Rock” quartet Vodz, and our editor-in-chief thought of me to review the little gem...at an unfortunate moment in time where my access to Internet is somewhat limited to an absolute minimum, meaning I cannot do do the slightest bit of research for additional info. So, it's with some regret that I can only re-write the info given me along with the material into something which reads easily.

It Was somewhere in 2010, when lead singer Elton Boussen, guitarists Brennan Caboor & Benjamin Moll, bassist Marvin Marteijn, and drummer Matthijs Quaars got together to start rehearse covers of the likes of Pantera, Machine Head, and Lamb Of God, and that same year the quintet went out of the rehearsal room, playing the local venues of their home base village Oostburg (South-West of The Netherlands) with great success and positive response from the att

Hailing from Beveren-Waas, Heads Up High is a Belgian quartet which started as a quintet at the end of 2011. About a year later, the position on the lead guitar was taken in by Nicolas Moens, and the material already written was reworked to something which the band itself calls a blending of Pop Punk and Hardcore.