Album Reviews

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    Spyros Charmanis – Wound (2012)

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    Delivering a truly cinematic experience via Progressive Rock music, today we have Spyros Charmanis and his full-length release “Wound”. Clocking around 72 minutes of brilliant music, this self-released album delivers delightful compositions that any fan of traditional Progressive music will love from beginning to end. Spyros ability to craft intricate songs that are both musically and technically engaging without being overly done or falling into the ‘musical masturbation’ category that many Progressive bands unfortunately fall under.

    The album opens with the intro track “Pushing The Sky”, a song that is very reminiscent of Progressive greats Dream Theater, and similar bands. With such a playful and strong opener, Spyros greatly indicates that this will be one quality and fun release. After the opener, the album ‘splits’ into three different sections of the conceptual foundations of this release. This concept basically tells the story of a fictional character through a series of experiences, too bad the artwork in this CD is very dark and we had trouble reading it unless we had a direct light source on the booklet.

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    Attempted Life – Pangaea (2012)

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    Hailing from Finland, today we have a trio that delivers quite interesting music that is ridiculously hard to pin down exactly what they play, so we will just say they play Metal. “Panagea” marks the band’s latest EP that features five very different tracks that range from Sludge to Melodic Metal to Groove Metal, and almost everything else. The only consensus we can reach is that the band has that Finish Melodic Death Metal vibe to them in most of the tracks.

    Opening with the funky vibe and hard rocking riffs. The harsh vocals only add to the overall confusion of the band’s identity, but they nicely enhance the experience. Switching from catchy riffs to melodic passages it kind of gives the feeling that this track is actually more of a jam-session than an actual song. On a more serious note, “Graveyard Bitch” has a more traditional structure and relies on powerful riffs to create a melodic atmosphere that is sometimes accelerated to mildly aggressive levels.

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    Show Your Face - Afraid (2012)

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    Nailing down three solid and very catchy tracks, today we have Show Your Face and their EP titled “Afraid”. Hailing from Greece, this band nicely combines Groove Metal with Core elements to create very engaging tunes that will appeal to a wide variety of people. With a somewhat unique sound, this band is a worthy representative of the recent Core-with everything movement.

    Opening with the razor sharp “Afraid”, this track delivers a hefty dosage of powerful riffs that sometimes feel a bit Deathcore, but the band’s Thrash influences pulls them apart from sounding like another The Black Dahlia Murder clone band. The screams are very typical of Core-stuff releases, but the emphasis on catchiness really makes this song quite enjoyable.

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    Ashes You Leave – The Cure For Happiness (2012)

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    What better early X-mas gift can anybody ask for than the latest Ashes You Leave album titled “The Cure For Happiness”. Dropping this November 29th, 2012 through Rock’n’Growl, this eagerly awaited release is set to fill that void left in 2012 of an excellent Gothic Doom Metal release. Delivering nine tracks of pure melancholy and powerful emotions, this album is sure to keep the band’s legacy intact of excellent album that are only release when the band really feels they are done right.

    Newly fronted by Giada “Jade” Etro, the band returns in full strength as they have managed to find another excellent vocalist that can lead their melancholic music. Wasting no time, she delivers a commanding performance in “Devil In Disguise”. In this amazing track the band nicely sets a melodic mood with their traditional violins and well-crafted keyboards. Jade’s vocals immediately gave us chills when listening to the song since it is very eerie how well they mix with the band’s sound and greatly enhance the atmosphere.

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    Oniromantic – The White Disease (2012)

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    All the way from Italy, today we have Oniromantic and their very unique (and catchy) mixture of Progressive with Gothic Metal. Reminding us a bit to bands like Ommatidia and even Eternal Tears of Sorrow, this very unique band has a deep melancholic vibe in their music that makes its very intoxicating and quite fresh. Featuring eight delightful tracks, this is one hell of a release for a surprisingly unsigned band.

    The band start heavy with “Saturn Hellucination” delivering powerful riffs and a dreamy vibe that is greatly enhance by the powerful clean vocals of Mauro Mazzara. The melodic passage in this track is pretty well crafted and nicely indicates what is to come in the later songs. In “High Resolution God” we got quite engaged by the playful progression of the song and the atmospheric keyboard usage. The female vocals on “Crimson” are quite heavenly and very well used.

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    WildeStarr – A Tale Tell Heart (2012)

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    Dave Starr and London Wilde (and the other dude) return with another excellent hard-rocking release that will be quite hard to equal by all the newbie bands trying to play straight up Melodic Metal these days. In “A Tale Tell Heart”, the band delivers a ten song dosage of excellent Metal anthems that greatly showcase London’s gifted singing talents and Dave’s master abilities to craft engaging melodies filled with epic melodic moments.

    Since the opener “Immortal”, we are let into the band’s world of traditional Metal with epic vocal lines, killer guitar work, and superb drumming. Led by epic riffs, tracks like “Transformis Ligea”, “A Perfect Storm”, and “Valkyrie Cry” blow past the listener pounding on your speakers like the good old Metal albums from back in the day. Even epic ballads like “Last Holy King” deliver that much needed infusion of true heartfelt metal that bands are missing these days.

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    Access Denied – Touch of Evil (2012)

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    Arriving today from Pitch Black Records we have Access Denied and their weird mixture of Gothic Rock with some Heavy Metal elements. Hailing from Poland, the band deliver nine tracks that the more we listen to them, the more we can’t really get into them. With a very linear and predictable style, this band’s release sounds very hollow and quite dull since the first few songs.

    Opening with a quite deceitful intro track that leads you to believe you are in for a treat of epic proportions, the band really brings the standard way down with the childish “Messenger of Death”. In this song we get some insipid guitars alongside some of the flattest female vocals we have heard in quite a while. They do have a few interesting changes, but they might be accidental since the ideas of the song seem all over the place.

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    Minority Sound – The Explorer (2012)

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    Hailing from the Czech Republic, today we have Minority Sound and their very catchy brand of Industrial Metal with some Electronic and Groovy modern elements. Catering to fans of bands like Silent Descent, Sybreed, etc, Minority Sound delivers eight solid tracks of heavy riffs colliding with super effective electronic beats creating ‘rave party’ Metal music.

    Opening with razor sharp riffs on tracks like “Hostile In Your Skull” and “Load of Destruction”, the band really delivers when it comes to catchy electronic elements paired with groovy riffs. The mixture of growls and clean vocals is pretty solid and allows the songs to quickly shift from heavy and aggressive to ethereal and catchy. Emphasizing on atmospheric elements, “The Explorer” and “Zealots” showcase the band’s ability to make engaging songs that are different from each other.

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    Kamelot – Silverthorn (2012)

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    Bouncing back from losing their signature vocalist Roy Khan, today we have Kamelot and their tenth full-length release “Silverthorn”. In this album, the band shakes off the loss with twelve epic tracks of very Symphonic Progressive Power Metal fronted by their new vocalist Tommy Karevik and a wide varied of guest vocalists (female) as well as some killer choir arrangements. The band’s sound seems bit more dark and gothic in this release, but the change of vocalist has really been minimized by Karevik’s excellent singing abilities and the band’s music writing skills.

    With keyboards and orchestrations in charge of Oliver Palotai, the band opens with a the very symphonic “Manus Dei”. In this intro track, the band indeed sounds more like Epica or Therion than Kamelot. Thomas Youngblood’s riffing is finally felt on the opening of “Sacrimony (Angel of Afterlife)”, a track that actually sounds a bit like Within Temptation in their “Mother Earth” era. This changes once Karevik’s vocals come into play, but interestingly enough the band goes into some choir sections very quick, leaving his vocal appearances in this track to be less than the choir parts.

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    Therion - Les Fleurs du Mal (2012)

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    Celebrating their 25th year anniversary, today we have Therion and their latest opus “Les Fleurs du Mal”. In this very unique release, we have Therion doing what Atrocity did with their “Werk 80” release, but with French songs from the 60’s and 70’s, going for an even more retro approach. In the last release we thought that Therion was winding down since the album was “more of the same” and not much to write home about, but they have managed to revive themselves with this very interesting and engaging track that will have you falling in love with the band once again.

    Cranking out fifteen tracks in 45 minutes, the band delivers quite a different spectrum when it comes to styles used in the covers of songs. Songs like the opener “Poupée de cire, poupée de son” have the signature Therion sound, but other like “Une fleur dans le cœur” show a completely different side of the band. We are most impressed with how Christofer Johnsson and company managed to transform these original French songs a bit into the Therion sound, and some of them even have a certain Victorian flair to them (like “Soer Angelique”). This makes this release quite a delight to discover how each of the songs presented in this release (if you know them from before) will sound with the sonic overhaul.

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