Saxon is one of those bands who’ve been around for so long, are liked by most metalheads, yet never managed to achieve the same breakthrough bands like Iron Maiden of Judas Priest were able to. They also made part of the NWOBHM scene, and despite a dip in the late eighties that lasted into the early nineties, have since regained their strength and are churning out album after album.
While back in my younger days is was very hard to find female, or even female fronted bands, nowadays we can say we’re spoiled. But this also means that since there are that many female fronted band around nowadays, there is also a fair share of bands who are rather mediocre.
Magica, hailing from Romania, is a band that has it’s ups and downs. Some of their songs are fantastic, others are just mediocre. Could this be due to the fact that Magica meanders between power/symphonic metal and something I’d call pop-metal ?
If you’re a fan of heavy metal à la Iron Maiden of Helloween, then read no more, but go out and buy this album immediately. Of course the vocalist is not as good as Bruce Dickinson or Andi Deris, but he’s almost there.
Crashdiet was formed in 2000 by Dave Lepard who formerly played in a death metal band Warpath, a rather strange turn in his career if you ask me, coming from a death metal band and forming what can be called a glam metal band. However the first line up had not much success, so a second version of the band saw life, and released their first album ‘Rest In Sleaze’, which was rather successful.
Just before 2013's Saint Patrick's day, the most important Irish holiday, The Tossers step forward with the release of their eight studio album, The Emerald City, referring to their hometown, Chicago. It's no doubt that they both love their roots in Ireland and their current home. They're very clear about that as the fifth song on the record is simply called USA and immediately after that, we have the track simply called Saint Patrick's Day.
With the release of Violence by Tear Out The Heart from Saint Louis, USA, Victory Records returns to what they were doing seven or eight years ago: releasing the most valuable American hardcore and metalcore records. Just think of the early years of A Day To Remember. The label really set that band on their way for world domination.
This split-album isn’t just some cheap re-release. It was originally released on 10” vinyl edition in 500 copies, and now it gets re-released with a bonus track done by each band involved with the split. Again in 500 copies only, by the way…
Actually, this material was (re-) released to celebrate SardoniS’ Japanese tour and so on, but who cares, besides a handful of Japanese Sludgers?...
One of the most innovative and mind-blowing Doom-acts from Sweden is, without any doubt, this band: Kongh. Their new piece, Sole Creation, was recorded at the Teknikkompaniet studio with Peter Lundin; mix and mastering have courtesy of Cult Of Luna’s Magnus Lindberg (check out the review on this band’s newest release as well, updated on Concreteweb on 10/02/2013).
Female grunters aren’t that unusual anymore, but one of the most impressing and most beautiful ones (there are many, and since I do profoundly adore 1. beautiful woman and 2. beautiful Metal, I am but a lucky human entity) is Mona Beck. She first impressed me on Illnath’s former album, Third Act In The Theatre Of Madness, which gave me a double-bind felling.
It might be hard to accept, and one won’t believe it, but Ulcer aren’t a band from Sweden. In fact, they hail from Poland.
The band was formed in 2006 and there was a self-released debut full length in 2007, called Serpent Trinity. There was supposed to be a split-EP earlier this year with Graveyard, but I’m not sure this piece of vinyl had actually been released in mean time.
