Black Blade – Welcome into the Warfield (2011)

While the whole Greece is on total economic meltdown, it is good to see that their Metal production is still intact and there are young and promising bands like Black Blade. In this 3-song demo, the band shows that they have enough creativity to really catch our attention with less than 15 minutes of music. Featuring a healthy combination of Death Metal influences with more traditional sounds, the band achieves maximum catchiness very effectively in these songs.

Opening with “Warfield”, the band delivers a powerful bass guitar line surrounded by melodic guitar riffs and a ‘discrete’ Death Metal snarl, like the bands in the past used to do (first Sepultura albums, etc). I this short track, the band quickly establish their ability to create simple yet catchy melody and mix elements from different genres, like the Southern/ Heavy Metal section mid-way through the song.

Carefully crafted with a very melodic (and epic) intro, “Sick Mind’s Race” is the middle track of this release. With this song you can hear the rawness of the band’s sound and the ‘jamming’ feeling this track really has. The bass guitar is again one of the standout elements of this track, and the melodic section around the middle is just excellent. The solo in this track is also very nicely crafted and placed in the song.

Closing with the instrumental “Barbarian Sword”, the band unleashes a nice melodic piece that is very entertaining to listen to. In this song we noticed that the drums get a bit annoying and sound fake in some places. The album indicates that they have an actual drummer, so we have to chalk this one up to a weird mixing artifact. This track in genera is pretty fun to listen to and hear the melodic potential of this band.

In general, we have to say that Black Blade is a promising band and with this 3-song demo they show they have pretty solid songwriting skills and are proficient at their instruments. If you like to hear some melodic Metal with that naivety that ‘young’ band have, head over to their myspace and start enjoying this catchy tunes.

Release: 2011

Country: Greece