Abigail Williams, one of the most promising North American bands is back with “In the Absence of Light”, a very dominant second full-length release. After tons of line-up changes, and loosing the very talented Ashley Ellyllon to Cradle of Filth, the band manages to maintain some of its bombastic sound from before and unleashes a guitar-driven Symphonic/Melodic Black Metal attack unlike any other band in North America has ever done before.

Before people start hating on this band, we will mention that they do sound like Cradle of Filth, Dimmu Borgir, etc, etc, etc, and that the band did have some ‘American’ Deathcore/Metalcore influences. However, the band with “In the Shadow of a Thousand Suns” did craft some pretty nifty Symphonic Black Metal songs that are only rivaled by their European counterparts. The band also sounded completely different to the whole USBM scene since AW used a more symphonic and ‘European’ sounding style. Because of these reasons we do respect and actually like (very much) AW and their powerful sound.

The German Heavy Metal monsters are finally back with their first studio album in 14 years and with a new vocalists that while not as good as respected as Udo, he holds his own at the helm of such a legendary band. Accept has managed to combine some of their old day’s magic with a fresh sound that sounds better than anybody else in the Heavy Metal scene.

For the first time in years we can notice that Wolf Hoffmann and Peter Baltes managed to get their shit together and craft an epic album worthy of the Accept moniker. And by recruiting Mark Tornillo as the vocalist they managed to get a vocalist that we are sure nobody, except the hardcore Udo fanboys, will be complaining about since his performance is better than expected.

After receiving “Ganjahovahdosed” from The White Mice last October, we can’t really know what to expect from the label 20 Buck Spin. This month we got an equally cool, but completely different release with Christian Mistress “Agony & Opium”, the band’s long-awaited debut album. Featuring 6 hard rocking Heavy Metal tracks, you will surely be blown away by the band’s effectiveness in creating catchy and powerful melodies.

Coming from Olympia, Washington (also the label’s headquarters), Christian Mistress is surely set to take the American Heavy Metal by surprise with their guitar driven songs. The bands dueling guitarists do an awesome job in crafting the perfect back bone for Christine Davis raspy vocals. With less than 30 minutes of music the band makes a great introductory statement with this brilliant release.

Every once in a while we get albums that make us listen to them over and over in order to form an actual opinion about them. After the first spin, we knew that Poois latest release “Opera House” will be one of those albums that will take more time and effort in order to properly describe and correctly inform the listener about what they should expect with such a rich and interesting release.

Hailing from New York, this band will surely turn everybody’s head around with confused and puzzled faces for at least a few minutes. After you get over the first weird impression about this album, you discover that Poois is actually one hell of a talented band that has constructed a very diverse and unique ‘sound’ that is showcased in small doses through the album’s 13 tracks. There is not really a ‘main’ influence other than the Metal aspect of the bands music, and this is also a stretch since they feature influences of Alternative Rock, Grunge, Progressive Rock, and other genres.

While there is very good Metal music from bands south of the US border (Cenotaph, Mutum, Disgorge, Aglarond, Hacavitz, etc), it’s not too common to hear good Latin Metal in the USA, besides Brujeria. While most people in the USA’s Latin community are listening to Reggaeton, Shakira and similar bullshit, it’s great to hear bands like M-16 that are keeping their Latin identity and kicking ass.

As a Hardcore/Metal band from New York, M-16 has great power in their musical aggression and they sing completely in Spanish so they say (even though some of their song names are in English, and some lyrics are definitely in English). The band’s aggressive Hardcore style has many Metal elements that makes it brutal at points, but without loosing track of the melodic aspect of Metal and Hardcore.

Hailing from Canada today we have Artep, a symphonic Black Metal band that does one heck of a job in crafting epically crushing anthems of pure darkness and destruction. The band’s first full-length release is filled with pleasing surprises for all fans of Melodic/Symphonic Black Metal.

Signed on Bleak Art Records, the band is a great addition to their already impressive roster of bands such as: Aenaon and Sokrovenno. With no minutes to spare, Artep kicks off this release with a solid intro that sets the stage for the greatly diabolical and lush atmosphere of “The Antichrist”, the albums second track. Since this song you can hear the bands solid guitar work paired with atmospheric keyboards, making the comparisons to Emperor, Dimmu Borgir, Anorexia Nerviosa, etc., an easy pick in describing the band’s bombastic and aggressive sound.

In these times where most Black Metal bands are still doing what somebody else already did in the past, it’s very difficult to find something worth listening to and spending our hard earned money. Kozeljnik from Serbia might have a shot at being one of those few bands that are worth your money and your time.

“Deeper the Fall” is an album that while not original by any means, it does a great job in recapitulating what we all have experience in the last 10-15 years of Black Metal. The band merges Satyricon-style grooviness with different styles of singing and random elements that have worked for the genre in different occasions.

All the way from the Appalachian Mountains today we get the deeply enigmatic U.S. Christmas and their super trippy Psychedelic Rock/Blues/something else. Our first encounter with this awesome band was on the Hawkwind tribute split album, where the band completely owned Hawkwind’s songs and provided an amazing rendition of them.

Signed to Neurot Recordings, the band delivers their fifth full-length release “Run Thick In the Night” (RTITN for short) which clocks at almost 80 minutes. With such a long album you would expect to have a bunch of wasted time, but with RTITN this is not the case. Every single sample, riff, etc, is creatively masterminded to be part of the whole experience created for this album, and before you know it the CD ends and you will want to keep listening to it for hours.

In the eve of the band’s 25th anniversary and after a 3 year waiting period, we finally get a ‘new’ release from Neurosis, in the form of the live CD “Live at Roadburn 2007”. With amazing clarity and masterful production behind this release, you closer than ever to having Neurosis play in your living room in CD form at least (We are still waiting for a proper live DVD/Blu-ray featuring 5.1 or even 7.1 audio).

For all of us ‘old-school’ Neurosis fans “Live at Roadburn” comes with a bit of disappointment since this release features songs from “Times of Grace” till the bands 2007 album “Given to the Rising” but nothing else from before. However, with the band’s previous live CD’s and the bootlegs we can get that fix.