Essence’s history starts in 2005, when some very young friends from Denmark wanted to play Thrash in the Teutonic vein. They recorded an EP in 2007 (Art In Imperfection) and they officially debuted with the 2011-full length Lost In Violence in 2011. Indeed, when it comes to the choice of titles they still had / have to evolve, yet when it comes to the song writing and performance, well… Essence do sound as if they’re active for a decade!
I did have the goated honour to review Milking The Goatmachine’s former releases Back From The Goats, Seven… A Dinner For One, and Clockwork Udder (see this wonderful site’s archive section in case you do goatly care), and now our pretty website’s boss grants me with this crazy combo’s newest play, Stallzeit. Time to go to bed, dear goats, but not without those sweet lullabies during bedtime-porridge!
My personal meaning about German Paganers Wolfchant is an ‘up-and-down’ opinion. Both first albums (Bloody Tales Of Disgraced Lands and A Pagan Storm, released in, respectively, 2005 and 2007, through CCP) were acceptable, yet nothing more. Then they signed to Massacre. 2009’s Determined Damnation for sure was their best effort to date, but Call Of The Black Winds (2011) was a disappointing step backwards.
As most of you might know already, trash metal isn’t my cup of tea. Which implies that I have suffered enormously listening to this album. This is trash metal at its purest form. Fast, aggressive. And to make matters even worse the lyrics – I guess they’re English? – are understandable. The drummer is trying to beat the world speed record I guess, but that’s about it.
Why this album, originally released in 2007 had to be rereleased is a mystery to me.
NoiseArt Records is a label that is growing enormously. Not that evident, for the Music scene is going through a crisis. In this label’s case it has not to do with signing big-selling commercialised acts, yet with signing qualitative bands. Oke, I do not need to exaggerate, because nobody is to like every single release through NoiseArt; I do not either. But most of the albums (and so it leads to the bands as well, of course) are of a more than average quality.
It’s been seven years ago since the last ‘new’ album was released by this German band. They did release a compilation and a DVD in that period however.
I’d almost forgotten about the existence of this band, but I was greatly pleased by this new effort. It’s not innovative, but somehow it manages to mix epic power metal à la Manowar with classic heavy metal à la Judas Priest. Now both of the aforementioned bands have always been high on my list of preferred bands, so imagine what a combination of both styles could do.
One of my favourite scenes, at least when it comes to Pagan / Viking / Epic-oriented Black Metal, is the East-European one, with countries like Romania and Hungary more specifically. When it comes to the first one, Romania, well, I guess I did pronounce my appreciation more than once in recent reviews for acts like Satanochio, Negura Bunget, Avatar or Syn Ze Sase Tri (check out the archives-section).
