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Ligeia - Bad News (Ferret) Review by Steve
Green
Misery Signals - Controller (Ferret) Review
by Steve Green |
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Sometimes the Ferret releases excite me, at other times they bemuse me.
These two releases invigorate a bit of both As far as Ligeia are
concerned, I just don't get what they are about at all. Rather than go for
the normal metalcore crap of heavy/clean vocals, they seem to blend
aggressive vocals with someone who sounds like Chad Kroeger of Nickleback.
Admittedly, the melodies work, but I simply don't like this at all. This
angst ridden style is as tiresome as the emo brigade and I'd personally
stick them all on a remote island so they can all cry about the injustices
of the world together. For about the 100th time this year, I wish bands
like this would just stick to the aggressive side of their sound as the
softer side, simply sounds like shit.
www.myspace.com/ligeia
Misery Signals are much more Metal friendly than their label counterparts.
Their disjointed rhythms have a massive ebb and flow feel to them, which,
quite niftily, is also the name of a track on this album. But it fits
their style perfectly. This Devin Townsend produced opus is way ahead of
the mediocre Metalcore pack, despite the occasional dip into this tiresome
territory. For the most part though, this is a wall of unrelenting
discordant rhythms, topped off by Karl Schubach's mighty roar. Personally
I think he's wasted in this band and would be even better fronting a
misery induced Death/Doom band, such is his powerful range.
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Think a younger, harsher Nick Holmes before Paradise Lost wimped out.
Heavier tracks like "Parallels" are definitely going to appeal to a more
Metal orientated crowd, I just think the wimpy parts of the more Metalcore
numbers such as "A Certain Death" and "Ebb and Flow" will put your average
Metalhead off. Anyway, you can make your own mind up at:
www.myspace.com/miserysignals as both "Parallels" and "A Certain
Death" are available for streaming. |
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Paganini - Medicine Man (PaZouZou Records) Review by Steve Green |
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Here's a brief rundown on the history of our main man Marco Paganini. He
has sung with the Tygers of Pan Tang, also with Babara Schenker in Viva
and supported Motley Crue on their Theater of Pain tour. Ok, introductions
over, here's the review.
The album begins with the title track and I have to say, it's a bloody
awful way to begin the album. Imagine a really bad karaoke version of
Motley Crue murdering Home Sweet Home, with added double cheese and with a
singer that sounds like Journey's Steve Perry, but with an horrendous
cold. Fuck, I hate this song with a passion. Thankfully, The Secret is a
great, greasy rock n roller and despite a tepid chorus, is infinitely
better than the first |
song. Oh yeah, and the main riff is stolen from Zodiac Mindwarp's classic Prime Mover.
This album has two sides to it. The heavier songs, despite being riddled
with every cliché in the book and with lacklustre choruses, are thoroughly
enjoyable. And they suit Marco Paganini's voice perfectly. But for
whatever reason, he seems to like the odd slow song or two, and to be
perfectly honest, they aren't very good. His voice is much more suited to
the rock n rollers than it is to throwaway crap like Teardrops. I'm just
thankful to whoever invented the skip button.
Ending the album is two different versions of one of my favourite
Sensational Alex Harvey Band songs, Faith Healer. And I have to say, that
Marco's vocals are spot on, although I think the band musically, fail to capture the
vibe of the original. But SAHB were/are one off's, so you wouldn't really
expect any different.
So, overall, this is a pretty indifferent album, mainly due to the softer
songs not hitting the mark.
www.paganini.ch |
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Pyramaze - Immortal
(Locomotive) By: Joe Florez |
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This Danish outfit has been in existence since about 2001.
What is interesting about this six piece unit is that they
have always had an American singer. First up was Lance King
formerly of Balance Of Power and other projects/bands. I have
never heard those records, but know about them. Then,
something that I never thought would be possible occurred.
When Matt Barlow (Iced Earth) left the band a while back, he’d
pretty much sworn off making music, but these guys managed to
get him to do this thing before re-uniting with IE. Again, I
knew about this, but had no way of obtaining this disc. Along
comes Locomotive (Thank God!) who signed them for this release
and now we can all |
hear it together. The bottom line is…worth the wait! This
absolutely rocks. Now, I did have some skepticism at first
because Matt has such a unique voice and any music you could
possibly put over his lung work would automatically think that
it was a new IE project. No so. There is a lot more going on
here and it’s as far removed from his day job as possible.
Once we get past the epic intro, we dive headfirst into “Year
Of The Phoenix.” Hot damn! These guys pull out all the stops
to make sure they get our attention. Hard driving riffs that
are furiously melodic and Matt screaming right at the
beginning ala Halford style. Once the speed slows down for a
more mid tempo range, the vocals are very emotional as one
would expect and everything else is just packed with power and
emotion. The one thing that separates IE from Pyramaze is that
these Danes use keyboards to accentuate their sound and add
some atmosphere, while IE is more raw and basic. We are off to
a great start, but as the tracks move on, can we expect
redundancy or surprises every now and again? The guys continue
to bring down the house with “Ghost Light.” Barlow’s vocal
range gets really low at times and the background vocals on
here that help out Matt sound eerie, but cool as hell. The
music is a bit harder and meaner, but continues to have class.
“A Beautiful Death” is a really kick ass song as not only is
everything amped up, but there is plenty of keyboard work to
make it sound nice even thought it’s a dark topic. Top notch.
Holy shit! This album really is it all and gives the fans
exactly what they/we want…quality music. There are fast tunes,
mid paced and a ballad and are all played to perfection. Come
on and feel the music with the band. I didn’t think it was
possible, but Pyramaze is nothing like IE and for the better.
This is a definite album to behold. Now, onward to purchasing
this disc.
www.locomotiverecords.com |
www.pyramaze.com |
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Supagroup - Fire For Hire (Foodchain) Review
by Steve Green |
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Airbourne have made quite a name for themselves with their AC/DC inspired
retro Metal. So can New Orleans based Supagroup do the same?
This isn't an all-out case of AC/DC worship as the high octane What's Your
Problem Now? is more like the Black Crowes covering the 60s era of the
Rolling Stones. But for the most part, vocalist Chris Lee sounds like a
cross between Bon Scott and another late Scotsman, Alex Harvey. The music
too, is first class bad-boy boogie and is dirtier than any of Bon Scott's
escapades with larger than life women... well, almost as dirty.
As expected, there's not a lot of originality on this album. The riff from
Lonely At The |
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Bottom is a real neck snapper and the chorus is achingly
familiar, as is the whole of Sold Me Down The River and most
of Promised Land, which is fine with me. The one song that
Angus and the boys would have been proud of though is
Jailbait, especially with its near the knuckle lyrics about
picking up the local sheriff's underage daughter. It's an
absolute classic and I'm sure it'll be a fan favourite for
years to come, as will the majority of this album. Let's not
beat around the bush here, if you love the Bon Scott era of
AC/DC, then you are going to love Supagroup.
www.myspace.com/supagroup |
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The Keith Reid Project - The Common Thread
(Rockville) Review by Steve Green |
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Keith Reid was one of the co-founders of Procul Harum in 1967 and is one of
the co-writers of A Whiter Shade Of Pale, arguably one of the most well
known songs of the 60s. With this album, Keith has worked with a number of
hard rock singers/writers, who have all interpreted Keith's lyrics and
stories. The end result is a mature album that will appeal to those that
like their hard rock just a little on the mellow side. Amongst the
vocalists are John Waite, Chris Thompson from Mannfred Mann's Earth Band
and Southside Johnny. Each singer sounds different from the next,
obviously, but there is a band feel to the whole album. Which is, I guess,
where the title of The Common Thread comes from. |
If you remember the John Farnham hit You're The Voice from the 80s, then
you might be surprised to know that it was actually written by Chris
Thompson and Keith Reid. Here we get Chris Thompson doing the vocals, and
after taking a few minutes getting used to someone else doing the vocals,
it ends up being one of the highlights of the album. Just edging it for me
though, are the John Waite performances. I'd forgotten what a cool voice
he had, and without showing any disrespect to any of the other singers, I
wish he'd featured on a few more of the tracks.
I think it is safe to say that this one will only appeal to the more
mature rock fan. But if this type of music is your thing, then I think
you'll enjoy what's on offer here.
www.myspace.com/keithreidproject |
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Those Who Bring the
Torture - Tank Gasmask Ammo (Pulverised Records)
review by Sam Thomas |
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One of the great things about Swedish musicians playing in
numerous bands is the way that it allows you to perform the
musical equivalent of simultaneous equations. That is to say,
by comparing the various combinations, you can, for example,
work out what the influence of one musician is on a band by
comparing two bands with a similar line-up where he plays in
one but not the other. Or, to put it another way, Those Who
Bring The Torture are sounding quite a lot like Demiurg (which
also features Rogga Johansson (sorry, Crawl)).
This is death metal with an underlying brutality (tracks such
as “When Human and Axes Collide”, “You Should be Brutally
Slaughtered” – which incidentally has some really nice |
guitar parts) but with such a groove to it, possibly almost
jazz-like in a way – obviously not much of a way as I can’t
stand jazz, but you get my general drift – that it completely
masks the heaviness of the whole.
This is a relatively short album (sub forty minutes) but it
cracks along at such a pace that I’m always caught out by how
quickly it seems to come to an end. Which is also another way
of saying that it’s pretty good, of course. Crawl, Worm and
Maggot have excelled themselves this time, by marrying the
elements of old-school death with a groovy vibe that makes it
sound fresh and relevant to today’s metal milieu. Think, if
you will, of Bloodbath with a groove, and you’ll have
completely nailed the Those Who Bring … sound. Very Swedish,
very professional.
Personally, I loved the distorted guitar sounds, which gave a
real dirty feel to the whole sound. Then again, there’s not
much to dislike about this album. And, being brutally honest,
anything that leaves you baying for more has to be pretty good
in my view, and this is no exception.
www.pulverised.net |
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| Vespers Descent -
Reality Dysfunction (Prime Cuts) review by James
Young |
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Melodic death metal seemed to be somewhat of a worn genre
before the start of this year, but with two reunions of the
original greats, At The Gates and Carcass, it has made a bit
of a comeback, and once again been stripped down to its roots.
Vespers Descent, from Australia of all places, seem to ride
this wave, opting not to go for the American influenced modern
thrash sound, but an old-school sound which harks back to the
days of At The Gates and early In Flames. Both the production
and musicianship are highly commendable for a band with only
one album behind them, and the formula has been tweaked just
enough to make for an interesting and fairly original listen.
The screams of Richard |
Clements are nothing new to the genre, which is probably a
good thing, but where the outfit really excels is in the
writing and delivery of the ‘Gothenburg’ style hooks of Grant
Burns and Shannon Over, which are present in full force from
the get go in ‘Spectral Awakening‘, as well as the solos that
make you feel as fuzzy as the first time you heard Arch Enemy.
Another positive is the band’s ability to range from extremely
vicious blast beat-laden passages to soft, almost acoustic
passages. The title track displays such a good fusion, moving
from Ben Mazzarol’s intense drum attack
to a soft passage, and incorporating some massive grooves into
the mix for good measure. ‘Deceiver’ goes full circle,
beginning and climaxing in almost tribal passages from
Mazzarol, displaying the excellent song-writing abilities of
the band, a rarity in a genre concerned mainly with writing
good riffs with little regard for structure. Apart from the
four main tracks on this EP, there is a well-executed cover of
At The Gates’ classic ‘Blinded By Fear’, balanced out by a
mellow instrumental entitled ‘Eclipse’, so all in all there’s
quite a nice mixture of the heavy and soft on this release.
Australia is not known for its melodic death metal scene,
which makes it even more surprising how excellent this EP is.
Fans of In Flames, At The Gates and the likes will lap this
one up, and even the embittered core of fans who think the
genre has been sabotaged by outside influences will have their
faith reaffirmed by this band.
www.myspace.com/vespersdescent |
www.vespersdescent.com.au |
www.primecuts.com.au |
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