Category Cd Reviews

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Liljegren Records/Sound Pollution

Norwegian rocker Pelle K first rose to recognition on the Norwegian national TV show “The X Factor”, performing German and Italian power metal songs. Via Youtube videos he became lead singer for both DAMNATION ANGELS and THE ANABASIS, plus got signed with DooLittle. An album with lyrics of love, fear and trust/strengths is promised. Guests like Tommy ReinXeed, Tommy Karevik (SEVENTH WONDER), Oliver Hartmann and Amanda Somerville help out to reach the heights of a band like AVANTASIA. This is the first installment, will there be more?

The pompous intro “Entrance” sets the trend. With the featured guests there can be no doubts what you´re about to hear...

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Massacre/Sound Pollution

69 CHAMBERS may not say much, but the name Tommy Vetterli has a fine ring to it. If anyone doesn´t know he is back in the revived CORONER again and has been in KREATOR too. The rest of the band is Tommy´s wife Nina Vetterli – Treml on bass and vocals and drummer Diego Rapacchetti. The band has marketed their metal/rock with tinges of gothic since circa 2008. They apparently make good use of the term crossover and are not a fraid to throw in some pop. Well, well, that sounds far off from CORONER…

Opener “Cause and Effect” features Chrigel Glanzmann from ELUVEITIE on vocals. The tracks combines pop with force and a heavy guitar sound...

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SPV/Playground

Since his first days in STEELER AXEL RUDI PELL has been high in the ranks of the world of music. In 1989 he started his solo career and has since played with the likes of Charlie Huhn, Rob Rock, Jeff Scott Soto, Jörg Michael, Mike Terrana and Johnny Gioeli. Today Axel´s band consists of Johnny Gioelli on vocals (HARDLINE), Ferdy Doernberg (HELLOWEEN, THERION), Volker Krawczak (STEELER), and the long-serving Mike Terrana (MASTERPLAN, RAGE). Axel has been successful with his many “The Ballads albums”, with the fourth appearing in 2011, and all in all this is his fourteenth album!

The amount of sheer routine sees AXEL RUDI PELL deliver yet another album of mostly above average catchy yet heavy tunes...

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Frontiers/BAM

HARDLINE´S history dates back to 1991. The term supergroup was immediate as it was formed by JOURNEY guitarist Neal Schon, brothers Joey and Johnny Gioeli on guitars and vocals respectively, bassist Todd Jensen (ex SEQUEL) and drummer Deen Castronovo. The circulation of musicians was fierce of cause, with Neal returning to JOURNEY and Tod and Deen joining OZZY. Geezer Butler has been in the band, which also goes for Rob Rock, and a good few more. Today the band is centered around sole remaining original member Johnny, who has enlisted the aid of keyboardist Alessandro del Vecchio (EDGE OF FOREVER), guitarist Thorsten Koehne (EDEN´S CURSE), bassist Anna Portalupi (MITCH MALLOY) and drummer Francesco Jovino (UDO).

Opener “Fever Dreams” had me going for the medicine box...

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Massacre/Sound Pollution

Cyprus metallers WINTER`S VERGE formed in 2004, and now release their third outing. I first came across them when they released “Eternal Damnation”, their label debut, in 2008. I was not the least impressed. Since then the band has changed drummers to Chris Ioannides and, in 2011, they toured with STRATOVARIUS. This time around they opt for heavier, groovier material with influences ranging from SYMPHONY X to PANTERA and RAGE.

Opener “Cunning Lullabies” is nothing really fancy, but it´s quite alright. Instead the band shows relentlessness paired with melody in the excellent “Paper Is Blank”, which is followed by a string of songs nice refrains, suitable parts of growl, good arrangements, grooves, and even more neat refrains. The sound courtesy of R...

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Massacre/Sound Pollution

Stuttgart´s thrashers DAVIDIAN strikes with their third album, thrashy but not cored. The story of the band hails back to 2003, when they released the self-financed “Abuse of Power”. Festivals and gigs followed and in 2007 they got a contract for “Hear Their Cries”. Worldwide distribution was included and more shows and larger festivals followed, supporting the likes of VADER and HATBREED. This time around they got studio time with Tue Madsen, and brought along their new vocalist Tobi Brausch. The rest of the band consists of guitarists Alex Schniepp and Micha Weidler, bassist Tim Hinderer and drummer Alex Scherf.

DAVIDIAN is new to me. The band sure has some ideas that deserves development, but also a –core element that I don´t really agree with...

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Nor the band name, nor the same called debut album’s title isnt boastful or excessive, if somebody listens the first hits, at least for one minute. The Embodied band already demonstrated with the previous demo songs, and nowadays their first full lenght album conquer around Europe, that its worth enough to remember their name.

The first Embodied disk thoroughly shaked up the nordic metal world in autumn, occured great media-echo in Northern-Europe and Germany, than the surprised music-critics immediately picked out for the debut album of the year in 2011...

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This live release was recorded for a two-part PBS Soundstage program. The live performance was filmed in High definition from multiple angles and as you’d expect the picture quality is superb. The sound quality is equally impressive with 5.1 stereo and a crystal clear sound.
The setlist is what makes this release so special – it’s not just Tom Petty and the heartbreakers playing their usual show. Instead we get some of their songs, a song Tom Petty did with the Travelling Wilburys, and covers from artists including Big Joe Williams, J.J.Cale and more. Classic songs such as ”Little red rooster” and ”Baby please dont go” are performed superbly well.

Tom Petty and The Hearbreakers look to be enjoying their time on stage and give us a great selection of songs – some slow and gentle, some f...

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One of the best rock bands to come out of Britain in the 1980’s, The Cult are back with their new album, ”Choice of weapon”.

After the collapse of the short lived Southern Death Cult, singer Ian Astbury joined up with guitarist Billy Duffy to form Death Cult in 1983, before changing the name less than a year later to The Cult. Their debut album, Dreamtime, won them plenty of fans, but it was their second album, Love, released in 1985 that really brought them mainstream attention and commercial success, and the band built on this with Electric (1987), and Sonic Temple (1989). Their 1991 album, Ceremony, was less successful, and their 1994 album, The Cult was even less successful, and the band split the following year...

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Industrial metal legends Fear Factory reformed in 2010 after a long absence, and quickly signalled that their decade long break was over by releasing the excellent ”Mechanize” album. Now just two years later they’re releasing their latest album, ”The Industrialist”. The band have described how it compares to the last album, “There’s definitely been an evolution from that record to this one,” states Burton C Bell. “It’s still familiar, very familiar and still very Fear Factory but there are elements that we didn’t really get to on the last record for the sake of metal.”
Dino Cazares has compared The Industrialist to the band’s longstanding 1995 classic Demanufacture. “Demanufacture took what we had done before and broke all that down to create something new...