Monthly Archives augusti 2012

Posted in Cd Reviews

Trojan Presents ‘Freedom Sounds’ is a box set that honours the most important names in Jamaican music in the last five decades

It’s an impressive collection – 108 songs spanning 5 CDs. It features some big well known names that are familiar to music lovers around the world, including Bob Marley & The Wailers, Jimmy Cliff, Dennis Brown, Desmond Dekker, Toots & The Maytals and Gregory Isaacs as well as a whole host of other artists and producers who over the years have shaped the sound of Jamaican music.

Around half the tracks are new to CD and there are many tracks here which are being released outside Jamaica for the first time, including ‘Fa Fa Fa Fa’ (Toots & The Maytals), ‘Brothers‘ (The Heptones), ‘It’s In The Plan’ (the Planners), ‘People Get Ready‘ (The Carib Beats), ‘A Taste Of...

Posted in Cd Reviews

Prog metal band Threshold have released eight albums so far in their long career. Founded in the late 1980’s they released their debut album (Wounded land) in 1993. Since then they’ve built an army of fans around the world with their albums and touring, and are now ready to release their ninth album – ”March of progress”

The album will be available in a limited Digipak edition including a bonus track; a standard jewel case edition; as well as a 2-vinyl-edition in two different colours, one of them exclusively available via the Nuclear Blast mail order store.

Threshold are a band I’ve seen play live before, but I’ve never actually listened to any of their albums. They are great live so I’d got high expectations for their album...

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Hellyeah is the group formed by former Pantera and Damageplan drummer Vinnie Paul. The band also includes Chad Gray (Mudvayne), Greg Tribbett (Mudvayne) and Tom Maxwell (Nothingface), which has led to the band being given the ”supergroup” tag – as many ther recent bands have been.
The band’s first two albums have been well received and achieved a good level of success, so they have a fairly high standard to meet with this their third album in order to make it as good as, or better than the previous albums.
The important question is – have they succeeded in making the new album their best yet? Well in my opinion the answer is a definite Yes !

Vinnie Paul’s powerful drumming drives the songs forward at a relentless pace...

Posted in Cd Reviews

Swiss folk metal band Eluveitie have just re-recorded their “Vên” EP. The EP was originally recorded in 2003 and is almost impossible to get hold of, so rather than just re-releasing it the band have taken the opportunity to re-record it with their current lineup. At the same time, their hard to find debut album ”Spirit” has been remastered and the two releases are being released together as a double CD release – ”The early years”.

Fans are certainly going to be excited by this release – for fans who have the original releases its a chance to get them sounding better than they’ve ever sounded before, and for fans who missed out on these releases then it’s a chance to listen to the bands early work.
Coming so soon after the latest album (Helvetios) which was released in February, I w...

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Krampus are an italian folk metal/death metal band. With 8 members then you get the usual metal instruments – drums, bass, guitar, as well as folk instruments – violin, bagpipes, Whistles & Irish Bouzouki. Since forming in 2009 they’ve self-released two EP’s (”Shadows of our time” and ”Kronos’ heritage”), and are now releasing their debut album through Noiseart records.

Musically Krampus are at the heavier end of the folk metal spectrum – it really is very heavy, but the range of instruments stop it losing the folk feel and straying too far into metal territory. It’s always a hard balance to get right as some fans prefer folk with a bit of metal whereas others prefer metal with a bit of folk...

Posted in Cd Reviews

With 121 tracks over four discs, this is an impressively thorough compilation of material from The Searchers. Their hits have been re-released in various best of and other compilations on a number of occasions, but their more obscure material has generally been overlooked and has been much harder to find. This compilation includes both the hits and the more obscure materian in a comprehensive overview of the bands career.
Timed to celebrate the band’s 50th anniversary, this 4 disc box set covers the whole span of their career starting with tracks from the 10” demo LP that they recorded at Liverpool’s Iron Door Club which includes the arrangement of “Sweets For My Sweet” which helped win them their Pye recording contract.
The set includes various live material recorded at Hamburg’...

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Karhu are a UK based four piece metal band that formed in 2008 and have evolved into the current lineup. Their debut album ”Survival of the richest” is now completed. Clocking in at 52 minutes and 13 tracks, it’s a substantial album. They cite influences including Lamb of God and Opeth, and you can certainly see those influences here.

There’s an amazing amount of diversity in the album with no two tracks sounding alike. What the tracks do all have in common though is the excellent guitar work, and the powerful growling vocals. In tracks such as ”The Dream” though, you also get clean vocals which give a real contrast to the growls...

Posted in Cd Reviews

Wisdom are a power metal band from Hungary – a country not really known for its metal scene. In fact I can only think of one other Hungarian band – Velvetseal. Despite this judging by both bands, there is clearly a better metal scene in Hungary than I’d suspected as they’re producing some great bands. Wisdom released their debut EP in 2004, and have released two albums since then, with this new album, Judas, being their third.
In terms of live shows, they have supported a number of big names including Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Heaven and Hell, Europe, Helloween, Stratovarius, Saxon, Doro, U.D.O. – an impressive list of bands to play with.

I have to say that I’ve been really impressed with this album...