Reviews
\r\nDark tunes are flooding to my ears. They travel fast but it decisively at the same times through the wires of the headset. The introduction tries to drag me as the main melodies are waiting stealthily to seduct .... and that is what happened. The sounds of "Rheinkaos" achieved their goal and revealed the band’s insiration. Although the demo has only three tracks, the attitude is unambiguous about what they are prepared to offer. But let’s go to the inner side ... starting with the cover!
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\r\nLamb of God is one of those bands that we expect them to progress constantly in their career. This is something that we have been watching through their whole sequence of albums. The biggest breakthrough though has been done since their last two albums, Ashes of the wake and Sacrament, as Lamb of God have been not only commercially, but also artistically well-recognized. Thus the whole metal community has been excited for their forthcoming sixth full length album, Wrath.
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\r\nThis here is the new album from Blade Of The Reaper and is out through Devil Doll Records. Watching the cover artwork with the bloodstained knife and reading track titles like “Submit to Satan”, “Here comes the knife” and “Baphmet’s Call” one can say that this here is a cult evil band following the morbid steps of the early Venom, Possessed and even Bathory of “Under the sign..” days.
\r\nWish, love, dream, hope, fantasy. When these words become notes evolving into music, the pictures and the sounds lead to an almost dreaming state which is overflowed with lyricism and emotions. I think that this description doesn’t fully cover this creation because it’s very difficult to put words to some musical trips.
\r\nSwiss Shakra managed to overcome the bad luck after their previous singer, Peter Wiedmer, had to leave the band due to such an unfair reason caused by a serious health problem he had. The rest of the band went against all these difficulties by taking Mark Fox to replace Peter and I think that it was the best possible choice. His job was not that easy as Peter’s replacement would be such a great thing to deal with, however the album “Everest” is a proof that he made it, actually in the best way.
Well, a brand new full length for Candlemass and I can see the huge smiles on the faces of all doom-dogs out there and not only them. When I’ve first been informed that Candlemass were composing new material, I thought that it will be more like a continuing to their previous album “King of the Grey Islands”. An album that I consider as one of the band’s best releases. But Leif has set his mind into something completely different, the revival of old Candlemass sound and he did it once again with the best possible way!!!
One of the albums that has impressed me the most is “Testimony of the Ancients” by the Dutch prog deathsters Pestilence, a band that left it’s mark back in the early 90’s and unfortunately disbanded back in 1994, after the release of the most ambitious release “Spheres”
I strongly believe that no one can doubt the originality of the Swiss metal scene through the years. If we have a look to the past we will remember some pioneer bands that created their own unique sound, bands like Krokus, Celtic Frost, Coroner, Samael and my personal favorite Messiah and many more. So from this unique metal scene a new power rising, the band called Pylon. This is the band’s second release (their first album “Natural Songbirth” can’t be counted since has nothing to do with the bands current direction ).
As I have said many time before, when it comes about a release from Italy something “awakes” inside me, and especially when is about an Italian release that features this unique doom sound, that only Italy can provides us, with many keyboards and unique atmosphere.