Band: CHAIN REACTION

Country: Poland

Title: Cutthroat Melodies

Label: Selfreleased

Year: 2010

Style: Heavy Thrash Metal

Review:

Everyone know the strenght of this country (Poland) when it comes to the Death and Black Death Metal scene, so it's a nice surprise to get to review something out of this leage, meaning a Heavy Thrash Metal band. "Cutthroat Melodies" is Chain Reaction's second album, the first out on a label as their debut was relf-released. What we get here is a collection of 11 tracks lasting for 44 minutes, a Modern Melodic Thrash Metal with lots of Heavy Metal influences especially on guitars. The tracks are well curdled, very mature I would say and proove that this band is looking to get a spot on the first stage of this genre. They have the necessary technical abilities, good imagination to create catchy tracks and basically everything here backs up what I'm saying. Bottom line Chain Reaction is a professional sounding band creating catchy music, supported by an excellent sound; this is a very good release, recommended to fans of groovy Heavy Metal influenced Thrash Metal.

Reviewed by Adrian

Rating: 9/10

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Band: DEATHCHAMBER

Country: Sweden

Title: His Will Be Done

Label: Selfreleased

Year: 2010

Style: Technical Progressive Death Metal

Review:

Deathchamber’s debut demo inspires a lot of intrigue.  This being my first music review for some time, and living in an era where any bored kid in a basement with a good computer can contribute to the already over-saturated Myspace music market (not to stifle your creativity, reader) I assumed that getting back into the writing gig would require me to muck through hours of boring, uninspired, unoriginal, or right-out bad music.  I was wrong!  While the name might be a bit generic (you won’t hear me complain about that much), their sound draws from a variety of influences that make for a powerful combination of At the Gates-style riffing, Dimmu Borgir-like symphonics and an overall notion of later Decapitated.  The production is fantastic; and with just four songs, I’m interested to see what these guys do next!  

Reviewed by James

Rating: 7/10

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Band: DUB BUK

Country: Ukraine

Title: Mertwy soromu ne imut’

Label: Eastside

Year: 2010

Style: Pagan Black Metal

Review:

Steps are burning, Dnipro’s rushing... – that was official advertisement of this album.

Ukrainian Dub Buk was relased his new album in Poland by Eastside label. Some years in silence and we has got a new face of Dub Buk. New music face of course, the lyrics are still about ukrainian nationalism and heathenism, hymnes of ukrainian glory. I’m not a fan of nsbm, I prefer heathenism without political/nationalism influences, that is why I listen to Dub Buk just for music. And music is very good – charakteristic vocal, not „black metal scream”, not growl, not „rindcore’s slaughting porky” – just Dub Buk’s voice with thrash influences. All album is maintained in the style of thrash metal with electronic influences. 6 tracks, when I hear more Slayer, more Kreator than folklore of Ukrainian Steps ? I hear more typical thrash taken from 80th and 90th of  XX Century than folkmetal charaktestic for pagan-metal bands from Eastern Europe. So one track (No.6) called „Syn Stiepiej” /Son of Steppes/ is a good, long, atmospheric pagan-metal flow, the best on this album, in my opinion, of course. So the newest music face of Dub Buk as post-thrash with electronic influences is very good of course. I think that’s better that Dub Buk is more inspired the sounds from oldschool thrash – these are „roots” too, not only ukrainian traditional songd, these guys listen to oldschool metal bands when they were young. :)

In short words: good, short album, I’m not bored after listening, I would like listen to this album once more in the nearest future. I’m not interesting in ukrainian nationalism, I just listen to music. And music is interesting. Slava!

Reviewed by Vilcin

Rating: 8.5/10

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Band: GO-ZEN

Country: Japan

Title: Hinamatsuri

Label: Self-Released

Year: 2010

Style: Gore Grind Death Metal

Review:

I found Go-Zen when I’m looking for absolutely other things... But that must be a sign  !!! Japanese grindcore metalheads positive kicked my butt, „Hinamatsuri” is the first full-lenght album of these young japanese grinders relased in May 2010. Cover of „Hinamatsuri” is taken from japanese popculture called manga/anime style, so If you, dear listeners, look on this more „carefully” you can see idea of this cover – this is, of course, true manga  but 100% grindcore, cartoon girl wirth destroyed pussy and with cartoon knife pounded in her tits – in one word: gorehentai... Whwn I saw this cover I thonugh: „I have to catch it” and I caught.

What about music? Ha, ha, ha !!! Young porky beteen buther’s machine and electric chainsaw saw. Short, wild tracks but these are not classical gore atmosphere like „classic” grindcore. This is japanese sens of humour mixed with grindcore and very little influenced by groovy death metal. Let’s look at tht titles: „Grinder” (first track and the most groovy on this album – and the longest, all one minute 49 seconds),  next „If you have a will” (with butchering porky’s vocal between sharp’s  riffs), „Salvare000” (definitely butchered porky’s vocal), „The Most Magnificent Blade” (posthumous/postporkus convulsions’ vocal with deathmetal flow), „Impaled Proceed” (groovy and growly death flow with infant’s scream), HiNA = HiN-NYU (machine gun drum with bombing guitars), Kotona Orgy (title spells all), Dangerous boys (Sphere cover – rockabilly/grindcore short track with toilet defecation effects). Big pints of sake for this guys !!!

Jus grind, just japan, just kick ass, and first of all – the biggest grindcores balls in 2010 in Asia.

Reviewed by Vilcin

Rating 8.5/10

Band: HOWLING IN THE FOG

Country: Italy

Title: Unhealthy Memories

Label: Glorious North Prod.

Year: 2010

Style: Black Metal

Review:

First release for this young label, Glorious North, but not the first release for Howling In The Fog, a one man band established in 2010 but that has already released one demo and its debut album, so my guess is we're dealing with another project that will release countless materials each year. We'll see...

"Unhealthy Memories" is a 4 tracks release lasting for almost 25 minutes, 25 minutes of raw Suicidal Black Metal. The vocals are playing the most important role here, desperate and hopeless, and although having a raw sound, they sound pretty good. The rhythm section isn't the best for this music, I mean is well executed and composed, but it's a bit groovier than this style allows. The guitars are surprisingly good, adding on top of the Black Metal riffs and leads a few catchy solos as well. The overall result is cold and displays a good atmosphere taking the listener from the ambient, meditative keyboard made 3rd track, through the depressive mid-tempo Black Metal second track and the more aggressive, fast fourth track. If you're into Depressive Black Metal and you like your releases raw, you might check Howling In The Fog as well. The CD comes in a nice digipack presentation including lyrics.

Reviewed by Adrian

Rating: 6.5/10

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Band: LETARGY DREAM

Country: Russia

Title: Heliopolis

Label: BadMoodMan Music

Year: 2010

Style: Progressive Doom Metal

Review:

This is a project of three members from the Russian Technical Death Metal band Beheaded Zombie, but their music with Letargy Dream has nothing to do with the one they play with Beheaded Zombie, and that's great, it makes sense this way.

"Heliopolis" is a 4 tracks release lasting for 50 minutes, so you can easily guess how long the tracks are. I think when releasing it BadMoodMan Music only thought of the Russian speaking buyers as the booklet is all in Russian, I have no idea what the lyrics are all about. The progressive touch in their music is brought by the continuous breaks and rhythm changes, the band passes easily from melancholic parts to Extreme Metal aggressive ones. I could say this is a very interesting musical venture, but although overall it is full of catchy stuff and displays a large variety of rhythms, sometimes you can get carried away and think of other things while listening. This happened to me a few times on the album when I found myself dreaming on other things and not listening to the music. Anyway, not your typical Doom Metal release, I could recommend it even if only for this.

Reviewed by Adrian

Rating: 7/10

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Band: SILENT STREAM OF GODLESS ELEGY 

Country: Czech Republic

Title: Návaz

Label: Season of Mist

Year: 2011

Style: Folk Metal

Review:

Silent Stream of Godles Elegy are pioneers of folkmetal genre in Czech Republic and one of the best folkmetal bands in Central and Eastern Europe. They are real folkmetalists, who play authentic folk music on folk instruments between metal riffs – this is not blackmetal with folk samle taken from keyboard. „Návaz” is a 5th album of Silent Stream of Godless Elegy and this is the most folkish album in SSOGE’s history. All lyrics was written by Hanka Hajdova and it’s  based on Moravian legends, stories, old slavic religion and contains atmosphere of Ancient Moravia. 

„Návaz” means „talisman” made of natural materials like hair, leafs of blackberry and sth like this. Music from „„Návaz” is the same – made of natural sounds with melodic doom metal influences. Folk music is the biggest power of SSOGE, they don’t play too fast, too heavy, Hanka sing very warm (all in Czech language, that’s great, I like that metal bands singing in own language) but with pagan expression, supporting by two male vocals – growl and „normal” voice.

Mokoš is a slavic goddess, Mother Earth, track „Mokoš” is about her... All lyrics in „Navaz” are very beautiful and contains a lot of pagan poetry with folklore influences. This is not „pagan-neverending winter with sword in forrest” but real slavic pagan/heathen folklore. That’s real paganism !!! That’s great album, one of my favourite, very good folk and poetry melodic doom metal unity. Melodic and folklore are the biggest power of this album and all SSOGE’s activity.

Reviewed by Vilcin

Rating: 10/10

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Band: SUNUTHAR

Country: Switzerland

Title: Us Auter Zyt

Label: Selfreleased

Year: 2010

Style: Folk Metal

Review:

Sunuthar is a one man band established in 2007 by Fenjorn who takes care of all instruments and vocals. Here I have its debut album, 11 tracks, 60 minutes, professional look, almost hard to believe this is self-released. The music on it is quite strange, although entertaining, Fenjorn fosuses on creating melodic acoustic guitar elements rather than developing his music on the Extreme Metal side, so the final result is a combination of quite soft sounding Metal based on melodic guitar leads (Power Metal sounding) with Folk Metal made of clean vocals, acoustic guitars and keyboards, that although used as background play an important role in all this Medieval Folk structure. A good thing is that Fenjorn uses multiple layers of vocals giving the impression you're listening to choirs, and filling the overall sound. Regarding this, the bad part of the CD is that sometimes the music sounds like something is missing, but as a final conclusion this is a good debut release that leaves place for promises for the future.

Reviewed by Adrian

Rating: 7/10

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Band: TETHRA

Country: Italy

Title: At the Gates of Doom

Label: Occultum Promotion

Year: 2010

Style: Doom Death Metal

Review:

Belfagor from Horrid is also a part of this quite new Italian band founded in 2008, but I have no idea if he only helps out or if he's a regular member. Anyhow, this one is their first and only release so far, a 5 tracks release that lasts for 25 minutes, and although Belphagor is a part of it, Tethra's music has nothing to do with what Horrid plays, well maybe only the old-school touch. Tethra is an Old-School Doom Metal band that makes use of some Death metal elements (rhythms and vocals) here and there, but the main conclusion after listening to this EP is that we're dealing here with a simple but effective music, without any innovative elements or such, but with a very good atmosphere for fans of '80's and even some of the '90's Doom Metal scene. Clean vocals combined with comprehensive growls, simple and straight-forward, down-tuned guitar riffs supported by quite melodic guitar leads, and a rhythm section that plays a very important role in the whole music, it's not like the bass and drums is only there for keeping the rhythms. Now the less satisfactory facts: the sound is very raw, I would have better named this a demo, but maybe they want to keep that analog feeling to it, and sometimes the music feels like something's missing inthere, they should create more tracks like the 4th and 5th. Anyway, think of giving this a chance if you're into old-school Doom, the one without keys and female vox.

Reviewed by Adrian

Rating: 7/10

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Band: TORTURE DIVISION

Country: Sweden

Title: Evighten Darar

Label: Selfreleased

Year: 2010

Style: Death Thrash Metal

Review:

My hat is off to these guys, who put out a solid full-length, with excellent production, while working without a label – it’s good to see a band to take that stance.  I always admire the work of an artist totally dedicated to their craft, and willing to put forth the hard work it takes to play death metal, and to live the lifestyle.  As a writer and lyricist myself, I find their content to be a bit on the shallow side, but then, I suppose many would argue that death metal SHOULD be that way, or is not about having depth, but I digress.  The metal itself is catchy, groovy, straight forward and of the death kind, no doubt. And it appears that the much-heralded Dan Swanö is mixing their next demo, which certainly says something.  On their website they tout themselves as "the world’s best death metal band, "though if you want my opinion, while this release isn’t totally un-memorable, I find that such a title might be a bit hard for this group to defend.  

Reviewed by James

Rating: 6/10

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Band: VARIOUS ARTISTS

Country: World

Title: Rising of Yog-Sothoth - Tribute to Thergothon

Label: Solitude Productions

Year: 2009

Style: Funeral Doom Metal

Review:

Although Thergothon had only 1 full-length release out they are considered the pioneers of this, nowadays so popular in the underground, genre called Funeral Doom, so releasing a tribute to this band was only a question of time since there are so many new bands and labels around focused on Doom. This will only increase Thergothon's popularity all around. I myself wandered on the net to listen to this band once i got the compilation because for my shame I wasn't aware of it. Solitude released a double CD compilation featuring 17 bands, some well-known in the underground, and some (most of them) with a less resounding name, some with with a lot of immagination on covering Thergothon's tracks, and some less inspired, with covers that sound almost as the original. But nevertheless this is one lesson of Funeral Doom Metal that any maniac of this genre should have in his/her collection. The sound overall is good so there are no complaints on this side, even though some tracks could have used a better recording studio. The bands that presented their tribute to Thergothon: Asunder, Officium Triste, Evoken, Imindain, Colosseum, Mournful Congregation, Worship, Umbra Nihil, Persistence In Mourning, Nojda, Otzepenevshiye, Krohm, Inter Arbores, Astral Sleep, Aarni, Axis Of Advance, Singultus. A release definitely worthing your money if you're into this genre.

Reviewed by Adrian

Rating: 8/10

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