”Existence” marks the ’bands’ 4th full-length album, and it is clearly their most impressive and ambitious release to date. With a vast array of guest musicians, this release is one of THE Melodic Metal/Rock albums of the year, even though it was released in 2010 elsewhere, we pick the North American dates for our top 10 lists.

With this double album, Beto Vázquez has managed to put together a very eclectic mix of musicians and each of the 20 songs combines powerful melodies with outstanding vocals. While the guest musician list is huge, is not as impressive as the ones from bands/projects as Star One, Ayreon and Avantasia. Most of the guests in this album, with the exception of Timo Tolkki, might be considered from the ‘B list’ of Metal, but they are equally talented and are just a bit less known that the ones on the ‘A list’ of Metal. We particularly like this approach since it allows the listener to discover lesser known bands due to the performances of their vocalists.

Jumping into the female-fronted Gothic Metal arena, today we have My Inner Burning and their second full-length “Eleven Scars”. Led by the strong voice of Rebekka Gaber, this band has a golden opportunity to get noticed by being with the label SPV.

Being nothing revolutionary and just adding another different sounding vocalist to genre, we believe that My Inner Burning might not really make a break in the scene and most people will call them out due to their shortcomings.

Keeping the flame alive of bands like YES and King Crimson, today we have Beardfish and their excellent release “Mammoth”. Being the sixth album under their belt, “Mammoth” moves forward with their super catchy and authentic old-school influenced sound. As you know from the band’s previous release, their sound is very listener friendly and excellently crafted.

Opening with “The Platform”, the band nicely shows their experience in crafting very engaging sounds that have both technical proficiency and catchy melodies. This song keeps getting better and better as it progresses. “And the Stone Said” in our opinion is the best track in this album. Clocking around 15 minutes, this epic song features very catchy melodies and great keyboard and guitar solos.

In the ‘meh’ column, today we have A Pale Horse Named Death and their debut album “And Hell Will Follow Me”. Even though the band features Sal Abruscato (ex-Type O Negative) and Matt Brown (Seventh Void), there is not much to enjoy (at least for us) with a lot of dull and repetitive riffs.

Maybe some fanboys of Type O Negative will try to cope with the loss of Peter Steele and adopt this band, since it sounds a bit like earlier TON albums (sans the vocals of course). But for us it just feels like a very average mixture of Doom/Stoner Metal and Alternative Rock elements that falls short of the caliber of the band’s members.

While the quality behind today’s Pagan’s Mind is far from the times when they released their opus “Celestial Entrance” and “Enigmatic: Calling”, with “Heavenly Ecstasy” they still manage to produce 11 tracks of very solid Power/Progressive Metal that will surely entertain most fans of the genre.

After a big WTF with “God’s Equation”, with this release they set a lot of wrongs straight and deliver a quality album that is both enjoyable and very well crafted. Singer Nils Rue takes the lead as the most recognizable feature of the band and soars in most songs making them very memorable.

After being constantly bugged by people to checkout this new amazing Gothic Metal band from Sweden called Amaranthe, we finally caved in and got a copy of their 2009 demo. To our surprise this was not totally bad, except from the fact that it was very pop-ish, and nothing really to ‘write home about’.

Fast forward to 2011 and the band finally releases their debut album “Amaranthe”. The first impression we had about this release is that a strong production can clearly improve things and that after a few years of working out the songs; the band has polished them to be highly effective pseudo-Gothic Metal anthems.  Before you go and close your browser and delete us from your favorites since you imagine we completely sold-out, bear with us and keep reading.

After their overly formulaic “Dark Matter Dimensions”, the band returns with a very interesting release with “The Unseen Empire”. It seems that the band somewhat changed a bit their ‘musical formula’ and now diluted their sound with some Male-fronted Gothic Rock/Metal influences.

While the traditional epic chorus sections are a staple of this album, we also have different sounding melodies that make this band… well… more melodic. The technical brilliance of the band is also pushed back a bit and while we do get some brilliant guitar sections, the focus is more on the catchiness of the songs.