As a clear example of finding a formula that works and sticking with it until you bore people to death, today we have Svartsot’s latest release “Maledictus Eris”. In this album the band takes a step backward from a promising career to a limbo-like place where they play the same song over and over for a whole album.

In a completely different way than on their previous release “Mulmets Viser”, Svartsot lacks imagination and direction in “Maledictus Eris”. We might venture to say that is the relatively short time between albums (one year give or take), but the band makes a very poor effort in changing things up and creating something worth purchasing, especially with the overcrowded Folk/Viking/Pagan Metal scene these days.

Hailing from Iceland, today we have Skálmöld and their debut album “Baldur”. Having signed to Napalm Records, it shows some signs of the quality of this fairly unknown band. When Folk/Viking Metal bands are a dime a dozen, it is nice to hear some bands that have something else to bring to the table and Skálmöld does a good job in leaving us with a promising debut album.

Mixing many different influences into their music, the first thing to standout is that almost no song in this release sounds a like. The band mixes catchy choir-like sections, engaging guitar solos and powerful riffing to perfection and creates a very epic and untraditional atmosphere that will surely appeal to fans of the genre that are tired of bands playing the same thing over and over.

As one of the best live bands we saw this summer, Powerwolf is set to unleash their fourth full-length release “Blood of the Saints” late July. Trying to surpass the success of their previous release “Bible of the Best”, the wolf pack is back with epic vocal lines, powerful guitars and all around very entertaining songs.

While many bands keep playing Power Metal in the traditional sense, we love bands like Powerwolf and Sabaton that push things with more powerful and diverse vocal styles and very well crafted lyrics and concepts behind their releases. “Blood of the Saints” features 11 songs and 41 minutes of pure Powerwolf catchiness and should propel them to the international status that band’s like Sabaton have achieved recently.

With the hundreds of self-released albums we have these days; it is very hard to find one that we actually want to keep listening to for more than 2 hours. Einvera’s “In Your Image” is one of those albums that has commanded more play time in order to fully digest what the band is proposing with their very unique sound.

Hailing from Los Angeles, California, Einvera is the real deal when it comes to musicianship and interesting combination of genres. The band goes from Melodic Death/Black Metal to weirder Folk/Progressive/Avant-garde influences that will have you scratching your head in moments, but will make you impatiently wait to hear what they come up with next.

In days where most American bands are trying to be as vanilla as they can in order to play what’s popular and/or achieve fame, it is quite enjoyable to get bands like The Living Fields and find that there are still lone warriors trying to combine different genres and produce very interesting (and fresh) sounding music.

Mixing a hefty dose of Death/Doom Metal with Pagan/Viking/Folk influences, “Running out of Daylight” is one of the richest and multi-leveled releases we have received in 2011 and made us take more than a fare dose of spins before we could actually write anything about it. With the opening “Remnant”, the band quickly delivers a powerful Doom foundation with classical string instruments in a way that bands like Ashes You Leave and Silent Stream of Godless Elegy do in their own respective areas. With crushing guitars and interesting tempo changes, the band dances around the lines of Doom brutality and melody seamlessly.

After the band’s tragic accident in 2007, Vogg went to play with Vader for a while and then decided to re-activate Decapitated again. As you can expect, fans of the band have been very eager to be treated to a new release of Decapitated, and “Carnival is forever” delivers a mixed bag of punches that sometimes are what the fans expected, but other times they are way off.

If you remember and love the older Technical Death Metal Decapitated, you should forget about that and be on the mindset to listen to a Vader meets Meshuggah meets Gojira release. “Carnival is forever” presents us with a somewhat interesting Death/Thrash approach that bands like Vader have been perfecting for and entire career. Note that we are not saying this album is bad, we are only expressing that is quite different to what we expected from the band.

Now on Lifeforce Records, Hackneyed is one of the most promising German Death Metal bands in the last few years. “Carnival Cadavre” marks the band’s third release and shows a great deal of maturity when it comes to writing catchy songs that make you want to start headbanging since the first few seconds. We all know that most DM is almost devoid of creativity, but Hackneyed manage to make the predictable and ‘traditional’ very enjoyable.

After the intro section of “Raze the Curtain” the band explodes into full on chugging DM riffs and vicious growls, this section made us start bobbing our heads up and down since literally the first riffs of the album. “Bugging for Mercy” keeps the groove going and delivers powerful guitars, elaborate drumming, and very interesting slowdowns. The catchiness level is very effective and after two songs this album got us hooked.

As one of the most interesting albums we have received this summer, So Hideous, My Love’s debut EP “To Clasp a Fallen Wish with Broken Fingers” delivers one of the best Post-Black Metal releases we have ever heard from the USA. With four crushing sounds, this EP will surely get the band some attention and build momentum for their hopefully soon return with a full-length release.

The second element that makes this band so interesting is the combination of classical music elements with Post-Black Metal. While this has been done in virtually all other genres of Metal, it sounds very well crafted and perfectly fitting for Post-Black Metal of this caliber. The instrumentation comes as the stronger element of the band’s sound and quickly allows the listener to shift their attention away from the sub par vocals.

MaYaN is Epica’s mastermind Mark Jansen latest creation and with this band he expects to fulfill other creative needs he has outside of Epica. This band in paper has a very impressive line-up since for the CD recording we had Jeroen Paul Thesseling on bass guitar, Frank Schiphorst and Isaac Delahaye on guitars as well as many guest appearances by Simon Simons, Floor Jansen and Henning Basse.

If you are expecting another Epica / (early) After Forever album, please stay away from this release since Quarterpast is considerably different to what you have heard before. This release is more focused on progressive Death Metal sections with some symphonic elements, tons of diverse vocal lines, and some orchestral elements (very few). We also want to warn the listener that this release is definitely a grower, since it needs more than your average number of listens to fully be digested due to the richness of the music.