Category Cd Reviews

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Limb Music/Sound Pollution

Here comes more heavy metal from the land of the Romans. Pisa is famed for its leaning tower, but VEXILLUM wants to make you notice the town´s heavy metal as well. Or at least the Folk heavy metal, as the five members pose proudly in kilts. Back in 2004 they formed as SHADOW VEXILLUM, Scottish kilts were soon added to their stage show and in 2006 vocalist Dario Vallesi joined in. While working on their debut effort they also shortened their name to VEXILLUM, and the demo “Neverending Quest” appeared in 2007. Since then they have released an album “The Wandering Notes”, changed drummers and worked on this one.

They do ride out at first, as “The Wanderers Note” opens with that and a hum. The rest is folky power metal with a slightly husky voice...

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Escape/Sound Pollution

REDLINE are a true hard rock band from Birmingham, England. Heard that one before? Well there are a few really famous forerunners… REDLINE formed in 2006 around the prospect of writing nu-classic rock songs. The band consists of Kez Taylor, vocals, A.D., guitars, Steve Petty, guitars, Mark Biddiscombe, drums and Redvers on bass. They might as well be from Barnsley, but the features of undeniably classic British hard rock are there. Their best shot at eternal fame this far seems to be the inclusion of “King of the Mountain” as official soundtrack to the Isle of Man TT Motorcycle Races. This album was recorded and engineered in studios like Mat Hat (MAGNUM, DIAMOND HEAD) and The Old Smithy (TRAPEEZE, JUDAS PRIEST), so what could possibly fuck up?

Opener “Battle ...

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Frontiers/BAM

Since their debut ”The First Chapter” (2005) CIRCUS MAXIMUS has released the smashing ”Isolate”, so anticipations are rather high for this new album. The band has reached an incredible status in those relatively short years, boosting incredible musical abilities, as well as a vocalist to match in Michael Eriksen.

And who can be disappointed in this album when it comes to the instrumental parts, or the vocals at that. From the first pompous sedate moments of “Forging” until the emotional melody of “Last Goodbye” rings out, there is nothing more to be had in terms of musical endeavors. It sure is a fact that the soft neatness of “Namaste”, the superb arrangements of “Game of Life” and the increased pace and varied style of “The One” will be the finest moments of 2012...

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First album of the young swedish band called ’Debt’ is a real new piece for the trash metal fan’s collections. Wasted Shells – which is inspired by big metal kings-, is mixing quite well the feeling of melodic styles of the genre, and the hard dark music, in a beautiful gloomy meaning of combining speeds and style-emotions pretty well. That gives us a kind of quality for feel the music-agressiveness and also nordic melancholy together inside the songs.

I think they are doing something really professionally, if in the end of the album I said: „I love it!”. Mysterious sounds of the album caught me first, despite that kind of hardness is not exactly my main style.

First of all in the song called ’The Darkness’ and also in ’Exhausted’ I ve felt the harmony even, if its not a sweet so...

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World Fire brigade is a band whose members have sold over 10 million records between them. You have Brett Scallions (Fuel), Sean Danielsen (Sile empty soul), and Eddie Wohl (producer for Anthrax, Ill nino, 36 crazy fists amongst others). So these guys clearly have experence in the music industry. They teamed up and started writing songs with the intention of licensing them out for other artists to record/perform but soon decided that the material they were writing was too good for them to want to give it to other artists, so they decided to record and release the songs themselves, and thus World Fire Brigade was born.

Brief comments on a few tracks

”The end of silence” isn’t a song as such – it’s just a short intro to the album...

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Soldierfield formed in late 2011 and now just a year later are releasing their debut EP – ”Bury the ones we love”. The various band members have spent time in other bands including Rise to addiction, Blaze, Paradise Lost, and China Beach.

This EP certainly makes me look forward to them releasing a full length album. You’ve got a good solid metal core to the music with rock and prog thrown into the mix, which gives it a nice well rounded but heavy feel.

Brief comments on a couple of the tracks..

The EP starts off with the title track – ”Bury the Ones We Love”. Heavy guitar riffs and powerful vocals make this a definite metal track, but at the same time those rock influences creep in with the big chorus that makes it a song that will appeal to a wide range of people.

”Feel alive” is a mor...

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Orden Ogan are back with their third album – ”To the end”. The German band released their first self produced demo/EP in 2004, then in 2008 released their debut album – ”Vale”. They signed with AFM records in 2009 then soon after had one of their songs ”We are pirates” used by German TV channel RTL in their coverage for the Formula 1 Grand Prix at Monza, gaining the band a huge amount of exposure and new fans. In 2010 they released their second album, ”Easton hope”. Now two years later it’s time for their third album to be released.

singer/guitarist Seeb says of the new album..”To The End” is a lot more heavy and fast, compared our first two albums. But at the same time there are a lot more hymns this time and the tracks are even more melodic...

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German band Mob Rules are about to release the seventh album of their eighteen year career. ”Cannibal Nation” seems an odd title for a melodic metal band – it seems more suited to bands playing Death metal or one of the other heavier genres, but after eighteen years the bands fans aren’t going to be put off by the album title. There is a reason for the album title – the song of the same name is about African despot Jean-Bédel Bokassa – leader of the Central African Republic who was charged with crimes including Cannibalism.

Musically Mob Rules are Melodic metal – along the lines of Orden Ogan, Blind Guardian and Dragonforce. There are prog elements and power metal too, and there is plenty of power here along with the melodies...

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This is the latest release from Universal Music’s ”Re-presents” series. As usual they’ve dug through the archives and chosen a great album to re-release. This time it’s the live album ”Live at the Marquee” from British Blues band 9 below zero. The band formed in 1977 and continued till 1983 when they split, reforming later in 1990 and continuing to the present day. The band supported The Kinks and The Who on tour as well as peforming their own shows, and also appeared on television including The Chris Tarrant Show, South Bank Show, The Old Grey Whistle Test, and comedy series The Young Ones .

”Live at the Marquee” was recorded in 1980 at the Marquee club in London, and was released the same year as a single album. This meant that it was limited to 14 tracks...

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It’s been a year since Reckless love released their last album, Animal Attraction. To coincide with their month-long UK tour they have decided to release an EP – Born to break your heart. The EP’s title track is a remixed version of a song from the Animal attraction album. Alongside this we get three live tracks, a previously unreleased song left over from the Animal Attraction album recordings, and three acoustic tracks including a cover of the Thin Lizzy classic ”The boys are back in town”.

The EP comes in a gatefold sleeve and includes a sheet that folds out to a poster slightly larger than A4 with a band photo on one side and track credits on the other.

”Born to break your heart” is a great track on the album, and the remixed version sounds very similar – unless you listened to the...