Having been disbanded in 1992, having lost their record deal and also the support from radio stations, MTV, and God knows who else, Sacntuary announced they would be reuniting in the original line up, save for guitarist Sean Blosi and would be playing on some metal festivals in Europe and the US.
What the f..ck is this I thought, when I put this CD on. Was I given some as yet unknown, hidden Motörhead album ? But halfway through the first song the reality dawned on me. This is a band who is doing his utmost best to sound like the aforementioned band, and almost succeeds. Starting from the voice, down to the bass guitar, even the sound of the drums and the guitars have been copied from Motörhead, at least that’s my opinion.
First a remark, for this split has been announced as a Greek collaboration; even within the CD-book gets mentioned: ‘Hellenic Black Metal War …raise the banners…’. So, what’s my ‘problem’? Actually I do not care, but being a purist (I admit: I am a semi-autistic freak…) I have to make this remark. This split consists of three projects amongst which two that hail from Greece indeed, and one that actually is not located in Hellas at all.
One of my personal favourite labels from France are Debemur Morti Productions, active for about a decade and, to my humble opinion, grown up to one of the most important Dark Music labels with more than one hundred releases on their roster, in mean time. In 2012 the label signed French Doom-act Monolithe, resulting in the release of the albums III (review: see update February 6th 2013) and IV (review posted on October 26th 2013).
Line up :
Mr. Lordi – Vocals
Amen – Guitars
Ox- Bass
Hella – Keyboards
Mana – Drums
Line up :
Johan Fahlberg - Vocals
Peter Östros - Guitars
Masahiro Eto - Guitars
Michael Müller- Bass
Bodo Stricker - Drums
‘Jaded Hear’t represent top class melodic hard rock and have become a German rock institution since the band came into existence 22 years ago. Based in North Rhine-Westphalia, Jaded Heart have turned into a ‘German-Swedish formation’ since 2005 with singer ‘Johan Fahlberg’ and 2006 with guitarist’ Peter Oestros’ emphasizing the band’s international standing.
Although Greenville (South Carolina) based Post-Hardcore outfit Islander has only been around since 2011, its members (singer Mikey Carvajal, guitarist Andrew Murphy, bassist Chris Doot, and drummer Eric Frazier) have been playing together since 2006. Admittedly, the guys broke up for a few years, but in 2011, purely out of love of being in a band, they got back together as Islander!
This is the debut album by Italian band Highway Dream, who were founded in 2008 in Cremona, a city that was home to some famous violin builders, one amongst them being Stradivarius (not the band, obviously…). In 2009 they already released an EP, containing four songs.
This Toronto based Canadian Metallic Hardcore act was founded in 2011 by singer Michael Kopko, guitarists Dave Caporale and Danny Panzini, bassist Jules Parris, and a drummer whose name I was unable to retrieve.
The first time that I listened to this album – I bought it shortly after the release date in my favorite CD-store – I was pretty enthusiastic about the approach of this Illinois-based duo, consisting of Dylan Taylor (bass and guitars; he also writes the lyrics) and Nostaum (vocals, guitars, drums and keyboards) (he’s a founding member of Wrathful Plague as well; the review on the Thee Within The Shadows-album will follow very soon, by the way).
