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  • Wolves In The Throne Room - Malevolent Grain (2009)

    When I first started listening to this album in the first few seconds I said to myself: “Another shitty band trying to sound like ‘true’ black metal that recorded this in their backyard and it’s going to suck”, well let me tell you I was wrong!!! While the recording itself is low quality, it actually adds to the bands general feeling and the feeling of the songs.

    The album starts like a typical low budget recording with some very ‘true’ black metal sounding distorted guitars, but when the vocals start…. they are clean female vocals, that sound really, really depressing.

  • Coram Lethe - A Splendid Chaos (2009)

    Coram Lethe is the Italian version of a less talented Arch Enemy. While Erica’s vocal style is quite similar to Angela Gossow, this band’s music falls short of Arch Enemy’s great guitar riffs and melodies.

    This album might be liked by Arch Enemy fans, but their attempts to sound like them will get in the way of the enjoyment process of this album. Don’t get me wrong, this album has its own merits and it’s pretty good, if we could ignore the whole Arch Enemy clone issue.

  • Northern Kings - Reborn (2008)

    The second album from this all-star Finnish band brings us 12 more cover songs from a very “unique” group of songs. The band’s adaptation of the songs is very nice in most cases, but some of them do not have a good sound. However, all instruments blend well together and are very well combined (if you ignore the fact that the songs are covers). The combination of 4 different vocalists make them have a very dynamic arsenal of vocal styles and quality, the 2 most notable voices are Marco Hielata and Tony Kako’s since their style sets them apart from the other 2 singers (Jarkko Ahola and Juha-Pekka Leppäluoto).

    While this album is a good metal cover’s album, it takes a while to adapt to, and sometimes you even need to go and see what song they are actually covering since you can’t distinguish them easily.

     

  • Within Temptation - Black Symphony (2008)

    This in my opinion was the live DVD of the year (2008), it was recorded at a concert at Rotterdam's Ahoy Arena sold out months in advance. The band performed for 10,000 or so fans with the full Metropole Orchestra a classical choir, and with Sharon changing into several costumes.

    I have previously watched the older Within Temptation live dvd’s and they don’t hold a candle to this one, production or content wise. The set list was as follows:

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