Monthly Archives februari 2013

Posted in Cd Reviews

Universal have been steadily re-releasing a string of albums over the last couple of years as Deluxe editions with lots of extra material thrown in. They’ve covered a wide range of artists across a range of genres, but now it’s the turn of 80’s pop band Transvision Vamp with their two hit albums, ”Velveteen” and ”Pop art” getting the deluxe edition treatment. Unlike many of the 80s pop acts, Transvision Vamp weren’t a polished result of the Stock-Aitken-Waterman hit factory, but instead combined a punk sound with pop to make some great music which had a lot more of a kick than most of the other music in the charts.

Pop art was the band’s first album and it reached number four in the UK album charts...

Posted in Cd Reviews

Kompendium is more an ensemble of musicians than a band as such. It brings together for this project an amazing lineup which includes an amazing array of talent including former and current members of bands including Genesis, It Bites, Porcupine tree, Nightwish, Pendragon, King Crimson, Camel, Magenta and many more, along with a choir, an orchestra and opera singers – see below for a fuller list of the people involved. The aim was to create a concept album on the scale of ”War of the worlds” – while there have been many concept albums in recent years they’ve almost all been pretty much a normal album by a band but with a common story running through the songs...

Posted in Cd Reviews

British heavy metal legends Saxon are back with their latest album – Sacrifice. It’s their 20th studio album in their 34 year career (they’ve also released 9 live albums and several compilations). The band’s last studio album, Call to arms, was a great album, so expectations for Sacrifice are high. The album was recorded at LS Studios in Yorkshire and was produced by Biff Byford with Andy Sneap mixing and engineering by Jacky Lehmann.

As usual the album will be available in a variety of formats – the standard CD, the limited edition CD which includes a bonus disc , Vinyl picture disc, digital download, and a direct to consumer (D2C) edition. Although details haven’t been released of what will be in the D2C version, they are usually impressive packages aimed at hardcore fans...

Posted in Cd Reviews

Thyrfing are a Swedish metal band that are often described as Viking metal or Pagan metal. The band take their name from Norse mythology – “Thyrfing” is a royal sword, a cursed blade that appears in several tales and myths. The band was formed in 1995 and released their first album in 1998 (the self titled Thyrfing). Since then they have released five further albums at intervals of 2-3 years, and after a gap of almost five years they’re back with their seventh studio album – De Ödeslösa. The album was mixed and mastered by Jens Bogren (Opeth, Paradise Lost, Witchcraft) at Fascination Street Studios.

Although there are only 8 sonsg on the album, the songs are all quite long – averaging around 6 minutes each, so the album is a good 48 minutes in length – more than enough to keep m...

Posted in Cd Reviews

Swedish metal band Enforcer are back with their latest album, ”Death by fire”. It’s their third album, and their first for their new record label, Nuclear Blast.
The album clocks in at around 35 minutes – like all of Enforcer’s albums, it’s deliberately been kept under 40 minutes. Singer Olof Wikstrand explains : “We write all music for the vinyl format and a normal LP can never be longer than 19 minutes on each side without losing sound quality. None of my favourite records are longer than 39 minutes anyway. It’s the perfect length both in that sense as well as keeping up an interest from the listener throughout the whole record.” With the resurgence of interest in vinyl, then it probably makes good commercial sense to remember it’s limitations and time the album accordingly.

Th...