CD

I reviewed another Halcyon Way album before, the IndoctriNation album, and what I wrote then, is still what I think about them today. Were it not for the many grunts and growls, I would actually like their music.

One year after the debut full length The Voyager, Draugûl return with the sophomore full length, once again released under the banner of the great Pesttanz-roster. The review on the debut, by the way, was posted recently on the site; check the update on September 21^st 2014.

Maximum Overload is the sixth studio album for Drragonforce, and is released on Ear Music, a new label that is part of the Edel Music Group.

What they bring us on this album, is basically the same what they have always done, very fast speed metal, but also very melodically.  How their vocalist Matt Hudson manages to sing at this fast a pace is a mystery to me.  I guess a normal person would end up with a knot in his tongue…

Adrenaline Rush is a female fronted band, who’s front woman Tave Wanning used to be a part of the Teen-Pop duo Peaches. I don’t know how Peaches sounded, but let’s just say that this girl might have the looks of a peach, but her voice is of another caliber.  Strong, clear, despite her young age (she was born in 1992).

Even without the label telling us so (in the info sheet accompanying the promo download of the album), one would realize that Norway's Oslo-based Tusmörke (Norwegian for “twilight”) is somewhat of an oddity, especially when listening to the band's music after having been apprised of the fact that they do not have a guitarist among them! The band's history also has an odd twist to it, by the way!

Following a premiere on 25/09/2006, American broadcasting company NBC ran a television series entitled Heroes for 4 seasons (total of 77 episodes), in which actor Zachary Quinto played the role of a serial killer with supernatural powers, killing others with such superpowers in order to add those to his own.

I seem to remember an episode of the popular cartoon series The Simpsons, in which Homer travels about the USA with the famed festivals tour Lollapaloosa as a performing artist catching a cannon ball with his stomach. If I ain't mistaken, the “super fun happy slide” (nothing more than making a belly slide through mud, really – something first documented and later televised in footage from the famous first Woodstock festival) was introduced in that same episode.

In reviews of albums by the Finnish Circle, I already mentioned the prolific career of that band's leader/ bassist, and touched on the other members' activities...and I am therefore quite happy to finally be able to go into the “extra-curricular” activities of singer, guitarist Janne Westerlund whom, besides playing in Circle, is also known from Pharaoh Overlord, Chainsmoker, Sweetheart, and Plain Ride, which he started as far back as 2004!

My first thought when I listened to this band's sophomore full-length was “Whàt kind of freaking weird thing is THIS?”! A sound drenched in electronics without any apparent guitar in the mix at all, and the wackiest of vocal signatures I've ever head...I decided there and then to not listen again until I had been able to get some info on the band (something which the label completely omitted to provide me with : the info sheet only gives data on the release, and the tracks held within!).

Hailing from Ouro Preto in Brazil, composer/ singer/ keyboardist Guilherme de Alvarenga came up with the idea to mix Classical Music's composition techniques (such as motif development and thematic unity) with melodic Death Metal, while attending music college in 2009.