Album Reviews

  • Hot Buttered Anal – Lies (2008)

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    Luckily Hot Buttered Anal sent this album in the same package as their first album so we avoided repeating the embarrassment of their mailing label (read the review of “Please Kill Me” for the full story).

    “Lies” artwork seems more conservative than the bands first album, but it still features interesting song names like: “We’re Not Retarded, Choke the Bitch and Duct Tape and Sausages. So we knew we were in for another journey thru this band’s demented collective brain.

  • Hot Buttered Anal – Please Kill Me (2007)

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    When we were first contacted by this band we were skeptical about their music since their name is pretty bizarre, but since we are pretty open minded and we link to review anything that is thrown at us, we sent out our mailing address to receive Hot Buttered Anal’s promo pack.

    The first moment of awkwardness came in the form of the 60 year old lady working at our PO BOX office handing up a package with a colorful Hot Buttered Anal mailing label on it, she is used to handing out packages with pentagrams and similar stuff on them, but never with a clearly legible name like this, anyways things have not been the same since, but enough with this story.

  • Armory – The Dawn Of Enlightenment (2007)

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    When I first listened to this CD of this American band I was blown away, it sounded like any other big name, and big quality European Power Metal band. I had to go back and re-read that it was actually an American band. To make things worse, this band is still un-signed! I’m amazed by this fact. There are tons of other bands that are signed that have less than half the quality that Armory has.

    Armory has been around since 2001 and has only released one demo in 2004, which was latter re-recorded to make the debut album “The Dawn Of Enlightenment”.  So this means it took all these years for the band to polish their first opus and by all means they achieved a very solid and impressive first album.

  • Viveynne – Becoming Jane Doe (2009)

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    I must say that since I stumbled with Viveynne’s myspace page, I have been very impressed with the bands vocalist talent, and the even most impressive thing is that she is 14 years old. While I usually don’t go raving about a band’s vocalist unless she is very good, I have found a new female vocalist to rave about for now in the Gothic Metal genre.

    Once I received “Becoming Jane Doe” I was very eager to put in on my stereo and take a good listen to this new EP. And from beginning to end I was very pleased with what I was hearing. Viveynne is a Canadian act that is fronted by its young vocalist Mikki, she is also main composer and songwriter for the band. If this is not impressive enough, she wrote all songs for this album when she was 13 years old.

  • Idols Are Dead – Mean (2008)

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    Idols Are Dead are trying to take the USA by surprise with their very interesting mix of Trash metal, sleaze rock and some Metalcore hints. This Italian band manages to create interesting and modern sounding music that would appeal to fans of all of the previously mentioned genres and from all different age ranges in the metal community.

    All tracks in this album blast you away from start to finish. All songs are very simple in nature since most riffs are very basic, but extremely effective. The catchiness achieved by the melody in all songs is one of the best things this band has going for them.

  • Hypno5e - Des Deux L'une Est L'autre (2007)

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    Hypno5e is a French band that plays avant-garde / experimental metal. I get plenty of albums to review each month and I have not heard anything like this album in quite a while, and I don’t mean this in a bad way “Des Deux L'une Est L'autre” is a very interesting album from start to end.

    Since the first track Hypno5e sets the stage for a psychedelic voyage that the listeners are about to take. This album features a very good balance of ‘heavy’ metal parts with nice ambient passages that complement each other to perfection; the band has achieved a very unique balance of musical elements.

  • Anneke Van Giersbergen (with Agua de Annique)...Pure Air (2009)

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    This is not a metal album by any means, and you are probably wondering why are we reviewing it. Well, in our opinion Anneke has been one of the most influential female vocalists in Gothic Metal, since it propelled The Gathering into international stardom, and she has participated in countless projects as well with many well regarded musicians in the Metal community.

  • Amorphis - Skyforger (2009)

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    Amorphis are back after 2 years of touring and promoting their highly successful album “Silent Waters”. This finish band is back with a perfect follow-up album with “Skyforger”. Capitalizing on the strengths of “Silent Waters” and using Tomi’s great vocals to the full extent they provide us with their highest quality release of to date.

  • Amoprhis - Silver Bride (2009)

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    I have been a fan of Amorphis since “The Karelian Isthmus” and their fabulous transition into a more mature and fresh sounding Metal. After being a bit disappointed by “Silent Waters”, I picked up this new single that contains 2 versions of the title track “Silver Bride” and a track called “Separated”.   I was pretty satisfied with the quality of the songs presented here and made me be hesitant to the late May release date of the full album.

  • Ashes You Leave - Songs Of The Lost (2009)

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    Seven years!!, yes seven years have passed since “Ashes You Leave” released their last opus called “Fire”. While that album showed the band’s transition into a more Gothic influenced Death Doom Metal, it was still a masterpiece that is always in constant rotation on my Ipod, and checking right now with my Itunes library, it’s the most played album on my device.

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