One of the most anticipated releases of this year, Iced Earth have finally delivered Jon Shaffer’s real vision of his Something Wicked saga, started ten years ago with the release of “Something Wicked This Way Comes”. Earlier this year the band released “Overture of the Wicked”, an EP that had the original Something Wicked trilogy re-recorded with Tim “Ripper” Owens on ...Read all

Symphony X have established themselves as a power progressive band that knows how to create an almost perfect balance of progressive prowess and power metal bombast without ever becoming dated, bloated or monotonous. The band’s last album “The Odyssey” was a clear example of this, combining enough neo-classical metal elements, topped ...Read all

One of the most anticipated releases of the year; legendary thrash master Dave Mustaine has been planning his comeback for almost a decade. Following a string a commercial failures such as “Cryptic Writings”, “Risk” and “The System Has Failed” (all of which had some great songs) Megadeth has returned to the metal Valhalla with its new offering “United Abominations” ...Read all

In recent years there has been a very small, almost blurry line that divides melodic death metal and the now big metalcore movement; so am I implying that Nightrage is metalcore now! No off course not, but they do flirt with it, they come so close that if it wasn’t for the very distinctive Marios Iliopoulos guitar work this band could be compare to As I Lay Dying… By the way ...Read all

Dream Theater is a band that has always struggled with the media and its listeners (fans and haters), some say the band is too heavy to be considered progressive, others consider them to prog to be metal, and so they’ve always been in between ...Read all

What’s the difference between brutal death metal and gore death metal? Is there really a difference or just ways of describing the speed and lyrical content of a death metal band? Ok for the purpose of this review we’ll just say that brutal death metal is faster and has few tempo variations while gore death metal is just death metal with ...Read all

Classic old school death metal, furious deep growls and a solid tendency for speed make this second album from Germans Sudden Death a decent attempt at a much desired exposure ...Read all

After the thunderous masterpiece of “Death Cult Armageddon”, Norway’s Dimmu Borgir have brought their black metal skills to next level, with an album that will set the bar for the genre even higher than its predecessor. “In Sorte Diaboli” is a concept album about the loss of faith and the discovery ...Read all

There is something very peculiar or intriguing perhaps about this Paragon re-release; Celestia’s music is based on beautiful songs cover up with raw, dirty, black tones and atmospheres, and all over that a bit of depressive doom melodies; but the basis of most of their songs are still remarkably catchy and “sweet” melodies ...Read all

The risk with doom/pagan metal is boredom, It may sound superficial, it may even sound ridiculous but the simple fact is that if an album is not “deep” enough, or if it doesn’t have the proper balance between melodies, events and atmospheric instances it may fall into the category of boring ...Read all

Sometimes talent needs some guidance, some restrain and some help in order to put ideas together and express whatever is in the mind of the artist. In this case the Lebanese band Oath to Vanquish handles different ideas at the same time and jeopardizes their whole message of sound obliteration because of their own aspiration of putting together all their inspirations and ideas ...Read all

There are two kinds of modern thrash metal been played, one is the Trivium “Metallica worshipping with Emo riffs” and the other one is the hyper fast, ultra aggressive, on acid Testament with some hardcore sounding vocals… you guess it, Harm is the ...Read all

“To say it is to know it, to hear it is to believe, is to believe” for some reason Mikael Stanne and Dar Tranquillity have never really been consider a band with deep lyrical concepts, and that is just outrageous to me! “I decline the sleight of hand that leads to rejection; an attempt to find closure with no sense of pride” come on this guy can ...Read all

Machine Head have always been judged by their monstrous debut album “Burn My Eyes”. The band suffered even more criticism after their little foray into the nu-metal realm in the late nineties. Add to that the constant problems with record labels, Machine Head is a group of guys with a lot of built up tension and anger…plenty of it ...Read all

Let’s just get the basic info out of the way; a huge band that is not really a band but rather a cooperation of talented musicians from all over the world. In this their second album more than 30 musicians help write, shape and perform one of the most ambitious projects on folk metal ...Read all