The very young Tampere, Finland-based label Saturnal Records suddenly appear out of the blue with some highly interesting releases; On Death’s Wings by Blood Red Fog and HellSpirit with Dawn Under Curse will be the first releases, available as from May 26th on, and at the end of July one can expect Anticipation For Blood Leveled In Darkness by super-group Voodoo Gods.
To say this album contains some of the best Dio songs would be an understatement. ‘Stand Up And Shout’, ‘Don’t Talk To Strangers’, ‘Holy Diver’ to name but a few of his own songs. Besides those there are also Black Sabbath covers, like ‘The Mob Rules’, ‘Children Of The Sea’, and finally also a Rainbow cover ‘Man On The Silver Mountain’. This is, of course, no more than logical, since Ronnie has been the frontman in all of those bands.
Second release of COC after a while on hiatus whilst Pepper Keenan is living it up with DOWN… I ‘ve been listening several times to this album and unfortunately I cannot get myself to really appreciate it.. Production wise it’s obvious that together with Pepper also a decent recording budget went… (it’s really a shame how Reed Mullin’s drums are sounding like a someone hitting cardboard boxes and sheetmetal whatevers instead of his well known hammering …. ).
I plead guilty your honor… I once bought a copy of Chicago’s ‘17’ album, an album that was released in 1984. Once in a while when going on holidays with the car, I take this album with me, because it’s still some sort of rock album, and my wife likes it a lot. But that album was and has for a long time been the only Chicago album I ever listened to.
A HILL TO DIE UPON, describe themselves as a blackened deathmetal band, I can add to that that they are a Christian Blackened deathmetal band, and even in today’s scene that’s still a rather the exception to the rule.
This Modern Metal act comes to us from Douglas County, Colorado, where brothers Matt (vocals) and Andrew (guitar) Whiteman have been training from tender youth to approach the making of music in an as professional possible style.
(read with exhalted voice) Guess what? I somehow got it in my head to make the introductory words to this review, as if it were a nature documentary. Wanna indulge me? Okay then... (now read on with a semi-deep, moody, but captivating, dramatic voice – Richard Attenborough-style, perhaps?) Situated at about equal distances (that being around 65 km) from Nottingham in the SW, from Hull in the NNE, and from Sheffield in the WNW direction, is the community known as Lincoln, in the English province of Lincolnshire.
Japanese promos, part 3 (for previous episodes, check my reviews of the Aggressive Dogs EP and the Gunship666 full-length), and yet again a change of pace: leaving behind all Hardcore pretenses, and going for an internationally tainted modern Hard Rock sound with added Dance elements through the inclusion of lavish synth sounds...here's Loka from the town of Sekagaya!
You'll remember that our editor-in-chief brought home three promos from his recent trip to Japan? Well, with the promo of Gunship666's second full-length album, we'll be taking you into somewhat different realms of the guitar-oriented music scene, because where the music of Aggressive Dogs (see review posted earlier) was situated comfortably within the Metallic Hardcore aura, we now have to do with a Tokyo based Heavy Metal band! Granted, the vocal approach gives the band a Crossover colouring, but let's not quarrel about details, shall we!?
Aha...the return of a Belgian band which, in 2008, brought great expectations by releasing its self-titled debut full-length through the Apache Productions imprint, and then went on to play at the prestigious Graspop Metal Meeting festival, prior to suddenly splitting in 2009, and thus effectively crushing any anticipations of putting our country on the global Metal maps (and charts) with a band which could cut the chops!
