CD

“Stormborn” is the  new  (4th) album  from Swedisch  metal band Bloodbound.  Bloodbound  decribe  “Stormborn" as a bombastic well  produced  album bringing  us metal hyms of exceptional class”……  Is this correct I than think….  Well it is partially,  it’s bombastic and it’s well produced, in fact it’s so bombastic that after playing it a couple of times the overkill of choruses and choir singalongs  make Stormborn   sound rather childish  (Satanic Panic, Iron throne or  just about every other track) instead of epic and that can’t

As far as I know this is the first l release of this LA based sludge quartet, good for some 25 minutes of doom/sludge with  blackmetal’ish scream vocals.

The scene from Cyprus isn’t that impressive when it comes to the number of bands out there. With exception of Arrayan Path, I can’t remember having written a review (for Concreteweb) for a band or project from that Mediterranean island. Enter Vomitile, formed in 2007, and creators of two pieces before: the nameless 2010-7”EP and Igniting Chaos, their debut album from last year.

What a band-name this is… Burning Butthairs, do you smell it? And then, the lay-out of the booklet (full of pictures, some even worse than others), the cover painting, the song titles (Die Axt In Dein Gesicht, The Milwaukee Cannibal, Butchered Raped Tochter, The Vampire Of Hannover, The Meat Eater etc.), does it give you a clue? Pop Music? Electro-Rock? Nu Metal? Vega New Beat? Grind-f*cking-core? Indeed, we have a winner, haven’t we!

I have to admit that I have never been that crazy about Abysmal Dawn, but throughout the years the evolution wasn’t but in a positive direction. I made a review for all former albums (From Ashes, 2006 – actually it was the 2012’s re-release that I reviewed; posted within the second Relapse-special on July 23^rd 2012 / Programmed To Consume, 2008; apparently this review isn’t available anymore / Leveling The Plane Of Existence, 2011 – see update February 18^th 2011).

This Melodic Hardcore band from Seattle may be new to me personally, but it certainly is not new to the world, as it was founded back in 2008!

The Gathering is a band I vaguely knew by name, and I might have heard some songs of them in the past, but that’’s about  it.  So when I was given this triple CD to review, I didn’t really know what was coming towards me.  Hell, I didn’t even know this band had been around for 25 years already.

Anyone even slightly interested in Progressive Rock would find it difficult to get around the band Marillion, which in fact is the most successful act to have emerged from Britain's 1980s Neo-Prog Rock scene. Marillion's guitarist, Steve Rothery, happens to be the band's longest running member, having joined in 1979 at the age of 23, when they were still called Silmarillion.

If there's one thing those with a somewhat broader taste for music will agree upon, it's that Neal Morse is quite a personality in the Progressive Rock world.

How painful : a Metal band with its first 3 albums (2001's Revolution Revolución, 2003's Confession and 2005's One Nation Underground) out on Roadrunner Records...and there's not even one in my collection, nor any of the albums which followed (2008's Enigma, 2010's Dead New World and 2012's Epidemia), and that with the sales figures of the two first albums already exceeding a million copies! I guess I' have to make some kind of mending, by relating to you the band's history in a nut-shell?