Arriving from the Metal promised land: Finland, today we have Dotma and their very impressive debut full-length album “Sleep Paralyses”. Having had a great month in terms of Gothic Metal releases, we are still completely blown away by the quality behind this monumental release.

Filled with great musical arrangements and emotive vocals, “Sleep Paralyses” quickly became a fixture in our regular Gothic Metal play list due to its catchiness and beautiful female vocals courtesy of newcomer Johanna Lesonen. The band’s music has some Power Metal tendencies, but the overall sound after all the vocal layering moves towards the Gothic Metal genre.

It’s been a while since we’ve heard from Shroud of Despondency and with “Dark Meditation in Monastic Seclusion” we can say the wait was not in vain. Featuring seven tracks of Black Metal and an atmospheric passages, the band returns with full force to make an impact on the USBM scene.

Mixed between acoustic passages, “Dark Meditations” has some excellent Black Metal sections with very creepy atmospheres that will haunt your dreams for months. A fine example of this is the use of choirs in the track “Homo Homini Lupus”, a chaotic 8 minute long track.

For people like us that like to put things into genres, bands like Ruled by Reason pose a serious issue since we can’t really figure out where they fit. This new coming band from the USA has influences from Deathcore, Metalcore, Melodic Death Metal, and countless other genres, so all we can say is that the band’s music is not Black Metal, not Doom Metal, not Viking Metal and definitely not Gothic Metal, but rather a wide variety of more modern genres (the –core shit) and some Melodic DM influences.

Moving on to better use of our words, “The Drawing of Dystopia” features 8 hard hitting tracks that will sure please all fans of music with melodic guitars. Yes, the Metalcore/Deathcore influence is the dominant elements of this release, but the band’s guitar acrobatics (like on the “Dr. Jekyll…” track CoB solo rip-off) gives them an upper hand over all the crappy bands in the scene.

Advertised as blending Deathcore with dubstep and electronic elements we immediately started listening to this release to figure out how can a band make Deatchore even worse by adding our current number one ‘musical’ enemy: dubstep. To our disappointment we figured out that the band not only does not have ANY dubstep elements, but it also has very few electronic elements in their sound.

While we are not great fans of Deathcore we can recognize a good release when we listen to one and “S.T.A.R.S” is half-way there. The band has great guitar parts and superb clean vocals but everything else in-between feels too artificial and slapped together. Even the ‘dubstep’ intro that has no metal elements in it feels like a plot to appeal to a different market.

Featuring a session member of Svarti Loghin, Srodek brings us with their second full-length “Förfall”, a total of 37 minutes of bleak and depressive Post-Black Metal. While Srodek is not as good as Svarti Loghin and genre heroes Lantlôs, this one man project does a pretty solid job in creating desolate landscapes and populates them with Post-Rock/Black Metal elements.

With the eloquent name of Nekrofucker, the band mastermind gives us 7 tracks that have a very familiar Svarti Loghin sound. While this is not completely bad, we can’t help but wonder where the creativity presented in “En Hälsning Till Döden” has gone. But it’s not all bad news since some moments of this release set it apart and make up for a good album.

Hailing from Poland today we have a very refreshing band: Made of Hate. This band plays Melodic Death Metal the true way, not the pussy Melo-Death shit that new bands play these days. With influences of older In Flames, CoB, Soilwork, etc, the band has a very guitar driven sound that does not feel like a complete rip-off of their influences, something very rare in this genre.

“Pathogen” contains 8 tracks of very solid guitar driven compositions that will have you head banging in a matter of minutes. Since the opening track “Friend” you can start to notice the riff-athon you are in for. Featuring ‘manly’ vocals the band has a strong sound that has the late 90’s Melodic DM feel all written over it.

With the current Thrash Metal revival we have seen bands like Exodus, Forbidden, etc, release very impressive albums. Onslaught brings their A-game and manages to release a pretty solid effort with “Sounds of Violence”. This album marks their best effort to date, after a long break and return to the scene in 2005.

Getting into “Sounds of Violence”, we are presented with 8 tracks and two filler intro songs. For around 45 minutes the band does a great job in bringing back the old-school Thrash Metal vibe with some more up-to-date production values. This release sounds like a million bucks thanks to the help of Jacob Hansen and allows the band to fully showcase its technical abilities and songwriting chops.

Hailing from Greece, next up in our review queue is Emerald Sun’s third full-length album “Regenration”. While Emerald Sun is nowhere near the ‘original’ category, this band does a killer job in crafting Power Metal songs with an old school vibe.

“Regeneration” features nearly 50 minutes of very enjoyable and flawlessly executed music that can surely please the most demanding fans of the genre. Of particular interest in this CD we have a cover of Bonnie Tyler’s “Holding out for a Hero” song which is pretty entertaining to say the least.