Nuclear Blast

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    Amorphis - Magic & Mayhem - Tales from the Early Years (2010)

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    If you’ve been following Infernal Masquerade for a while, you should know that we are one of the biggest Amorphis fans ever. When this release was announced we had big smiles in our heads since after seeing the band perform this classic songs with the ‘latest’ line-up and completely blowing us away, we wanted to have them on studio-quality recording and blast them all day long, since 7 out of the 13 songs in this album are some of our favorites of all time.

    “Magic & Mayhem - Tales from the Early Years” features 12 songs (plus one bonus track) that have been re-recorded and somewhat re-arranged to fit the band’s current dynamic sound. These songs are taken from “The Karelian Isthmus”, “Tales from the Thousand Lakes”, and “Elegy” albums.

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    Amorphis – Forging the land of a Thousand Lakes (2010)

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    Celebrating the band’s 20 year anniversary we finally get a live DVD from Amorphis, one of the best Metal bands to come out of Finland. And not only do we get one show, we get two full shows in a lush DVD/CD package (in the Deluxe edition). The shows presented on this DVD are a 2009 show from Oulu, and their Summer Breeze 09 performance, clocking over 150 minutes of pure unadulterated Amorphis.

    If you never seen Amorphis live, you will be quickly hooked on the amazing energy and chemistry they present on stage. Tomi Joutsen helped the band come back from the dead (for some fans) with their 2006 masterpiece Eclipse, after a lackluster “Far From the Sun” and their terrible previous singer Pasi Koskinen.

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    Enslaved – Axioma Ethica Odini (2010)

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    The masters of Progressive/Experimental Black Metal return with a super impressive release that tops anything they have done before this album. With “Axioma Ethica Odini”, Enslaved shows no signs of slowing down, compromising, or playing it safe. The band maintains the high musical standards they set with “Isa”, “Ruun”, and “Vertebrae”, and manage to push things a bit further on this long-awaited release.

    It has been years since we liked a Black Metal release as much as “Axioma Ethica Odini”, and through our listening experience of this brilliant album we can’t avoid using comparisons to Borknagar’s “Olden Domain”, Primordial’s “A Journey's End”, and Enslaved’s “Isa” among other is in terms of musicianship and innovation for their time. While there are many Psychedelic, Progressive and Experimental elements in “Axioma Ethica Odini”, the core roots of the album emanate from well made and aggressive Black Metal that is non-compromising and never feels watered down, but rather enriched by these elements.

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    Accept – Blood Of The Nations (2010)

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    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.

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    Kataklysm – Heaven’s Venom (2010)

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    After listening to the band’s EP “The Mystical Gate of Reincarnation” we were highly impressed by the sheer brutality that oozed from that release. Fast-forward almost two decades, several band member changes and a handful of uninspired releases (mostly everything they did in the 00 decade) and now we get “Heaven’s Venom”, a very inspired release that immediately turned our heads and made us focus 100% on listening to this solid release.

    While the band is not as ‘brutal’ as on their earlier days, they have matured enough to be able to pull of Melodic songs with brutal blastbeats and not even break a sweat. During the ten tracks presented in this release, the listener is treated to a rollercoaster ride through melody and brutality unlike another found in an ‘older’ Death Metal band this year.

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    Malevolent Creation – Invidious Dominion (2010)

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    Legendary American Death Metal band Malevolent Creation is finally back with another hard-hitting face-pounding release that will blow you away. “Invidious Dominion” is yet another powerful release in the band’s 23+ years in the business, marking the return of Jason Blachowicz to the band (for the 2nd time).

    If you are a Death Metal fans and have never heard of this band before, you are either 18 years old, or a complete poser and you need to stop reading… maybe not, but there is plenty of research you need to do in order to call yourself a Metal head. Anyways, the band feels completely rejuvenated and they totally kill on this release. Each of the 11 tracks are fast paced and as brutal as ever.

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    Blind Guardian – At the Edge of Time (2010)

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    For the some fans of the band “A Twist in the Myth” was a somewhat mediocre release, but with “At the Edge of Time” they return as powerful as ever. With a very epic release, Blind Guardian shows no signs of succumbing to mediocrity and will blow you away with around 60 minutes of pure unadulterated Power Metal with some Symphonic and Progressive elements.

    As you can expect, the songwriting on “At the Edge of Time” is both inspired and magical. With only a few sub par sections, all 10 songs in the regular edition of the CD are pure Blind Guardian magic. Being a bit more epic than on their last release, we finally get powerful songs that will have you chanting as you prepare to march into battle.

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    Decrepit Birth – Polarity (2010)

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    When people usually tell me that X band sounds like Death, I usually chuckle and leave before I call that person ignorant and have a heated debate on how that band NOT even closely sounds like Death. Today somebody told me that Decrepit Birth sounded a bit like Death (musically), so I again chuckled and proceeded to end the conversation, however I had “Polarity” on my review queue so I decided to entertain this thought for a bit and have an open mind about this American band.

    To my amazement, “It sounds like Death (the band)” is the best statement to describe Decrepit Birth and their monumental third full-length album “Polarity”. Featuring 11 songs of pure Death metal wizardry, I haven’t heard something as brilliant as this album in quite a while and haven’t enjoyed a (Technical/Progressive) Death Metal since the last Death albums. And since I was not a huge fan of Chuck Schuldiner’s terrible vocals, Decrepit Birth greatly improves over Death in this department.

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    ReVamp – ReVamp (2010)

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    Floor is back!!, and she is back with a vengeance. Two years have passed since After Forever went caput, and ever since the announcement of ReVamp was made, people were expecting nothing less than a great release from Floor. ReVamp’s self-title debut is nothing short of what ever people expected from this all-star project.

    With Floor on the driver seat she recruited guitar wizard Waldemar Sorychta and keyboard maestro Joost van den Broek. Composing the 14 songs presented on this album with these two musicians (and Koen Herfst on drums), she has gone back to the times when WE used to like After Forever. With a more Gothic Metal oriented sound and not focusing on her experimentation with a more ‘Heavy Metal’ style of singing she used in the last few AF albums.

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    Sabaton – Coat of Arms (2010)

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    With all the Power Metal bands these days trying to sound extremely technical, overly symphonic, or like space cowboys, Sabaton does their thing in a more traditional fashion. The band’s sound is bombastic but not overdone; the band saves up their musical prowess to focus on catchy rhythms and cohesive song structures.

    The band’s main characteristics are Joakim Broden’s deep and powerful vocals that can easily compete with Morgan Freeman’s ability to narrate the shit out of anything he is given. We also have the brilliant bass guitar line crafted by Par Sundstrom, a very particular sound (at least for us) for a Power Metal release. Both of this things will undoubtedly make any band that posses them a far superior band than the norm.

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