Album Reviews

  The band can trace it’s roots way back to 2000 but it wasn’t until 2010 that a debut surfaced in the shape of “She And Her Darkness”. Hailing from Italy, the Female Fronted Gothic Metal band have now followed that up with an excellent second album, which sees it’s …

4th dimension were formed in Italy in 2005 and started to write their own material in 2008, releasing their first song in 2009 on a compilation album.  They finished writing the songs for their debut album around the end of 2010 and recorded it in 2011, and it got an …

“Psalms for the Dead” is the Swedish doom metal legend’s swansong, their 11th album is said to be their final one. They are not meant to be splitting up just concentrating on playing live.  “Psalms for the Dead” is released on the 8th June in Europe via Napalm Records The …

Hailing from Greece Sacred Blood’s second album Alexandros was released on the 29th of May 2012 by Pitch Black Records. I first became interested in this album when my suspicions were confirmed about the concept of the album which is based on Alexander the Great. Any other history fan will …

Effloresce are a five piece band from the Nurnberg area of Germany.  With a sound influenced by Prog rock, classic metal and psychadelic prog they have a fairly unique sound.  The band released their debut EP, “Shades of fate” in 2009 and have just released “Coma Ghosts” –  their first …

Black Cherry are a band from Ottawa, Canada – there’s a totally different band with the same name based in London to cause confusion, as well as the similarly named but far better known Black Stone Cherry, so trying to find information about the band isnt as easy as it …

“The power of one” is the album from US Power metal trio Ninth Circle.  The album includes eleven original tracks and a cover of the Iron Maiden classic “The Trooper”. The band are clearly heavily influenced by European power metal bands such as Hammerfall or Stratovarius, and there’s an obvious …

Chris Kilmecky is an American musician.  He has a classical music background – one of his parents being a professional symphonic violinist, but he has a love of a wide spectrum of rock music, with inspirations including Rush, Foo fighters, Staind, Green day, Van Halen, Steve Vai, and many more. …

  When you hear the name Sleepy Hollow everyUSMetal-maniac will go nuts. The band only released one demo (“A Legend Retold“) in 1989 and the self-titled album in 1991. But unfortunately, after that they got buried and forgotten. Now, 20 years later, they return with their second full length-album “Skull …

  I unashamedly confess to have been a fan of female vocal Rock and Metal for more years than I’m prepared to divulge, and so it gives me a real sense of joy when I discover a band which completely knocks me off my feet. Formed in Russia in 2005 …

English metallers HeKz released their debut album ‘Tabula Rasa’ on 6 April 2012, offering us up 10 tracks in the process.  This is indeed an interesting album and another example of a band allowing its old school metal influences to flow nice and clearly through their music.  Several tracks on …

With an album title like Tales of Doom and a band name that has the word “cult” in it, you would expect Crimson Cult to be a dark, depressive doom metal band. How wrong are you? In fact, Crimson Cult is a straight up heavy metal band from Salzburg, Austria …

This debut demo by this new young Belfast thrash band is an impressive statement of intent from such an inexperienced outfit. Fittingly featuring a militaristic drum beat at the start, opener ‘The Act Of War’ is reminiscent of a faster, looser young Megadeth, especially in the rhythm patterns and vocals, …

Fronted by Russian-born guitarist/vocalist Nil Dilian, this Bergen-based quartet have self-released an eight-track debut album that is fairly standard second wave of Norwegian black metal fare, made up of crunchy groove-laden riffs over mixture of clean and deathbeat drumming. Opener ‘Delirium’ is nothing special – the sort of thing the …

Built around members of various other Belfast combos – most notably the mighty War Iron – this four piece, to paraphrase a well-known TV advert, do exactly what it says on the label… hammer the living fuck out of you. Their no holds barred approach is evinced right from the …

Straight away I’ll hold my hands up and admit that I’d not come across this band before, originating from Romania and now based in Germany they formed in 2008, and prior to this release have had one other album out “Glowing” which showcased their prog tinged Metal for the first …

Chorley based metal band Fire in the Empire have just released their astounding debut EP entitled, To the Thinking Man’s Horror and it will come with a shock to find out that this North Western four piece have only been together for just less than two years. An EP jammed …

There have only been a hand full of UK based power metal bands that have been able to rival/better the bands ever spawning forth from the Euro power metal scene. Now in 2012, Glasgow based melodic metal heads Farseer have released their new EP, Chthonic Visions which is the finest …

Celtic folk music and heavy metal have always been a weird combination, but a band called Waylander from Ireland that really does make the odd coupling it work. It’s odd really how two genres at the opposite end of the musical spectrum fit so well together, but it seems to …

  This album represents the bands full length debut, having formed in 2009 and released two critically acclaimed E.P.’s, the timing was obviously right to unleash “The Human Apheresis” onto a worldwide audience following signing to Massacre Records. Hailing from Finland the band fall firmly into the Black Metal genre …