CD

Hagel Stone released their debut album “Where Is Your God Now”. Members Dario Riz Ricci (guitar,volcals), Matteo Bertolini (keys), Gerri Ferro (bass) and Alessandro Occari (drums) formed an Iatalian Epic metalband in 2010.

Hum...hardly any info available on the Internet about this...Dudley based (or, as stated in the info sheet we got along with the promo download of this here 5-track EP, from the “heart of the industrial wastelands of the black country...”) “Acid-Punk Noise act, so I'll have to glue the bits together from what I've found, eh?

Yea-hah...Slussenanalys is back with a new...single?...I'd hoped the Finnish band might have enough material by now to record a complete album's worth of music!I mean, the band's debut album, Aquila Helvetos Asfaltos (re-issued on CD earlier this year – see review by yours truly posted 24/07/2013 for additional details) was already released at the end of 2011 so, is it that inconceivable then, that the band might have written enough material by now?

This Italian Symphonic Metal act from the town of Modena was originally founded in 2009 under the monicker of Hybrid Resolution, when guitarist/ keyboardist Federico Truzzi (formerly of Nothing Else and Mechanical Swan) joined forces with singer Monica Auditore and his Synthphonia Suprema bandmates Lorenzo Costi (bassist; also of Fogalord, and of State Of Mind) and Zana (drums; also of Fogalord).

This band came together by chance. At a moment when their respective bands (Comeback Kid, Sick City, and The Getaway) were having a time off from touring/ recordings, the brothers Andrew and Joel Neufels (respectively singer/ guitarist and drummer) came together with their friends Adrian Mottram (guitar/ keyboards) and Matt Howes (bass/ backing vocals) at the weekend of New Year 2006, simply to record a song that had been written.

When, in September 2009, the musicians [those being guitarists Martin “Semish” Semjan (also known from Candy Core) and Martin “Ondro” Ondrejicka (also of Core F.S.), bassist Richard “Richie” Potzner (also of Core F.S.) and drummer Marek Matejov (also of Canis Lupus) of the relatively popular Slovakian Metal act Rumburax (now longer existing

Oh my goodness...Outrage really is one of those well-used names in the Metal world, with at least 14 other bands (3 each from the US and Canada, two each from Germany and Australia, and one each from Turkey, Japan, and Finland) than this Death Metal act calling (or having called) themselves so!

When you'll check the atlas for the hometown of this Heavy Metal act, you'll find that Mikkeli is a relatively small place in the middle-of-nowhere of Finland, some 225 km NW from Helsinki, situated at the northern side of Lae Saimaa. When you'll dig a little deeper, you'll however find that the Mikkeli is also the capitol of the province of East Finland, and inhabits some 47,000 souls! Not such a small place after all!

As many of you will know by now, Iron Mask is the more popular side-project of Belgian Neo-Classical Power Metal guitarist Dushan Petrossi (of Magic Kingdom), formed in 2002 (with MK bassist Vassili Moltchanov also joining in the band, Youri De Groote behind the keyboards, and Phil Letaw as lead singer) and for which Petrossi signed to Finnish label Lion Music.

And so, I am again reviewing an album which would normally have been worked on by my revered Death Metal specialist colleague Ivan, due to the fact that our editor-in-chief overlooked passing the album onto him and, because he already had put enough on the poor dude's slate, subsequently put it on mine...using the (absolutely valid) excuse that occasionally all the work is getting at him (of course, that relates in the first place to the daytime job, which sees him left with so little free time he's occasionally sleepwalking on his days off!).