Also from Metalodic records, today we have Instanzia and their highly impressive debut album “Ghosts”. The band crafts their sound with very solid guitar riffing, majestic orchestrations and superb vocal arrangements that make most bands debut albums pale in comparison to “Ghosts”. However, a small warning comes with such an ambitious production: will the band be able to ever play it live with the same quality?

Since the very enthusiastic intro “Omen”, the band quickly builds up momentum in the same vein as Edguy, Avantasia, Pagan’s Mind, etc. With “Ghosts of the Past”, the band will immediately grab your attention with their fast-paced riffing, tight drumming and very impressive vocal arrangements. The band used three different singers to create a very powerful choir that greatly improves the band’s chorus sections giving them a very massive and majestic sound, but makes us weary on how this band will sound in reality when they don’t have all this studio magic behind them.

All the way from our neighbors up north (Canada), this weekend we got a very good promo pack containing Icewind’s latest release “Again Came the Storm”. Playing an excellent Power Metal with Symphonic elements, the band’s second full-length release will surely blow everybody away.

After reviewing all the great Power Metal albums of 2010, we are still very impressed by the quality of “Again Came the Storm” and it’s over 50 minutes of brilliantly crafted songs that will please even the most demanding fans of the genre. As we all know, this genre is very crowded with bands, but it’s quality bands like Icewind that make it prosper and continue to be one of the most impressive genres of metal.

In the category of the weirdest album we received in 2010, today we have Furze and their “Reaper Subconscious Guide” release. Being the band’s fourth full-length release, “Reaper Subconscious Guide” is full of surprises and a very old-school vibe that will throw most people off, and requires more than a few listens to fully digest.

As a ‘tribute’ to Black Sabbath, Furze recorded all this tracks in vintage equipment from the 40’s to the 70’s, creating a very interesting sound that we rarely get to appreciate. The band also recorded it and mastered it especially for the Vinyl version of this release, and then mastered digitally for the CD release (the one we reviewed) so rest assured that you will have two different sounding products that will be equally impressive.

With a killer presentation, a few weeks ago we received Pandemonium’s promo package that included their 2007 release “Hellspawn”. In a time when promo presentation does not matter for younger bands, it’s nice to see that Pandemonium’s new label Godz Ov War Productions cares enough to get their bands noticed and remembered by reviewers getting shit tons of albums every week.

Anyways, going back to the actual thing that matters: the music, “Hellspawn” treats us with 30+ minutes of crushing Black/Death Metal that is very high in intensity and effectiveness, even though it was released ‘back in’ 2007, this album still sound very easily comparable to anything we get in the mail these days. The band’s sound very well polished and all 10 tracks are very solid.

After getting trashed for their ‘re-interpretation’ of their “S.U.i.Z.i.D” album, today we have “Stönkfitzchen” the return of Bartsch and company to the more deranged and totally sublime side of Dark Metal and the Bethlehem sound we all love. Niklas Kvarforth is now somewhat adjusted to the band and their lyrics in mostly German, allowing Bethlehem to sound very deranged and as weird as always.

The first moment we received this promo CD we immediately started listening to it since we are huge fans of Bethlehem and Kvarforth’s work with Shining, and let me tell you, we were not disappointed at all with this cosmic combination of probably two of the most twisted people in Metal: Bartsch and Kvarforth.

In their two albums after their 2006 reformation, Limbonic Art has managed to tarnish their legacy created by impressive releases such as “Moon in the Scorpio” and “In Abhorrence Dementia”. “Phantasmagoria” is one of said albums, and with this release we can only hope that the band changes their name or goes back to sleep once more.

In another attempt at creating something ‘impressive’ the ‘band’ fails miserably and creates another sub-par release from what once was from Limbonic Art. “Phantasmagoria” features well over one hour of pointless and direction-less songs that will only cause Black Metal fans to cringe track after track, since this release will give you a headache similar to the ones you get by listening to pure static for 6 hours.