All the way from Sweden today we get WAN, a band that features a sound that will take you back to the ‘early’ days of Black Metal with their Bathory/Hellhammer influenced music. With a lo-fi production that will make some sound snobs cry, and fans of the ‘poor’ sounding music cheer. We think that there is a fine line between sounding ‘old-school’ and just ‘plain shitty’, and for “Wolves of the North” we have to lean on the ‘plain shitty’ category.

The band takes us in a 13 tracks and 35 minutes long ride of dull sounding old-school Black Metal. After a few songs you will start wondering why they are signed and releasing such an unimaginative album. There are some ‘ok’ moments, but they quickly get dulled by the monotonous drum machine, random riffs, and reverbed vocals. There is not much to be rescued from this album besides a few riffs and some decent songs like “Ulvhall”, but the drumming makes them less than bearable.

Abigail Williams, one of the most promising North American bands is back with “In the Absence of Light”, a very dominant second full-length release. After tons of line-up changes, and loosing the very talented Ashley Ellyllon to Cradle of Filth, the band manages to maintain some of its bombastic sound from before and unleashes a guitar-driven Symphonic/Melodic Black Metal attack unlike any other band in North America has ever done before.

Before people start hating on this band, we will mention that they do sound like Cradle of Filth, Dimmu Borgir, etc, etc, etc, and that the band did have some ‘American’ Deathcore/Metalcore influences. However, the band with “In the Shadow of a Thousand Suns” did craft some pretty nifty Symphonic Black Metal songs that are only rivaled by their European counterparts. The band also sounded completely different to the whole USBM scene since AW used a more symphonic and ‘European’ sounding style. Because of these reasons we do respect and actually like (very much) AW and their powerful sound.

The German Heavy Metal monsters are finally back with their first studio album in 14 years and with a new vocalists that while not as good as respected as Udo, he holds his own at the helm of such a legendary band. Accept has managed to combine some of their old day’s magic with a fresh sound that sounds better than anybody else in the Heavy Metal scene.

For the first time in years we can notice that Wolf Hoffmann and Peter Baltes managed to get their shit together and craft an epic album worthy of the Accept moniker. And by recruiting Mark Tornillo as the vocalist they managed to get a vocalist that we are sure nobody, except the hardcore Udo fanboys, will be complaining about since his performance is better than expected.

After receiving “Ganjahovahdosed” from The White Mice last October, we can’t really know what to expect from the label 20 Buck Spin. This month we got an equally cool, but completely different release with Christian Mistress “Agony & Opium”, the band’s long-awaited debut album. Featuring 6 hard rocking Heavy Metal tracks, you will surely be blown away by the band’s effectiveness in creating catchy and powerful melodies.

Coming from Olympia, Washington (also the label’s headquarters), Christian Mistress is surely set to take the American Heavy Metal by surprise with their guitar driven songs. The bands dueling guitarists do an awesome job in crafting the perfect back bone for Christine Davis raspy vocals. With less than 30 minutes of music the band makes a great introductory statement with this brilliant release.

Every once in a while we get albums that make us listen to them over and over in order to form an actual opinion about them. After the first spin, we knew that Poois latest release “Opera House” will be one of those albums that will take more time and effort in order to properly describe and correctly inform the listener about what they should expect with such a rich and interesting release.

Hailing from New York, this band will surely turn everybody’s head around with confused and puzzled faces for at least a few minutes. After you get over the first weird impression about this album, you discover that Poois is actually one hell of a talented band that has constructed a very diverse and unique ‘sound’ that is showcased in small doses through the album’s 13 tracks. There is not really a ‘main’ influence other than the Metal aspect of the bands music, and this is also a stretch since they feature influences of Alternative Rock, Grunge, Progressive Rock, and other genres.

While there is very good Metal music from bands south of the US border (Cenotaph, Mutum, Disgorge, Aglarond, Hacavitz, etc), it’s not too common to hear good Latin Metal in the USA, besides Brujeria. While most people in the USA’s Latin community are listening to Reggaeton, Shakira and similar bullshit, it’s great to hear bands like M-16 that are keeping their Latin identity and kicking ass.

As a Hardcore/Metal band from New York, M-16 has great power in their musical aggression and they sing completely in Spanish so they say (even though some of their song names are in English, and some lyrics are definitely in English). The band’s aggressive Hardcore style has many Metal elements that makes it brutal at points, but without loosing track of the melodic aspect of Metal and Hardcore.