Stormhold - The Lost World (Total Metal Records, 2013)

 

Genre: Melodic Death Metal

Year: 2014

Country: Belarus
Tracklist:

1.	Wind of Freedom	06:05
2.	Another Day	05:34
3.	The Understanding of Truth	04:43
4.	Eyes in the Eyes	04:58
5.	Our Blood's on the Cross of War	04:04
6.	The History Pages	05:28
7.	Inside My Mind	04:32
		35:24

Review:

Here is a country you don't hear that much metal from, Belarus!

From the start with Wind Of Freedom we hear a drummachine which does not give me a lot of confidence. I prefer real drums with my Death Metal.
Luckily the first track is the weakest on the album and things pick up a bit after that.
Stormhold plays Melodic/Symphonic Death Metal in the vein of Dark Tranquility, At The gates etc. but never really reaches that potential. The popularity of the genre is not as big as it was during the early 2000s, so it will have to compete with more metalcore releases then pure melodic death releases which might be a good thing for the band. On a technical aspect the cd is really badly mixed, the volumes of some songs are really different making me put my speakers higher and lower the whole time.
My favorite track is Another Day, which is a very aggressive fast song. Maybe in the future the band need to downplay the keyboard a bit and focus more on the aggressive part of their music. Also please invest a bit in a better mix.

About the booklet, it's just your run of the mill lyrics with photos of the band, nothing more and not really printed on high quality paper. The artwork is not really something special as well, a skull with some floating bullets photoshopped on it, I don't really get it.

 A very cool thing however is that because the album is only 35 minutes long they have printed their logo, faces and the skull on the backside of the cd! Now that is something I haven't seen a lot before. Well done for that. (See image above).

All in all it's a very mediocre release that only collectors of Melodic Death Metal should check out.

Rating:


Where to buy:
Here

Forceout - Delusion (Total Metal Records, 2013)

 

Genre: Melodic Death Metal
Year: 2013
Country:Ukraine
Tracklist:

1. Intro
2. Усе, що є
3. Living in Lie
4. I Need Salvation
5. Lost Feel
6. Свинцеві квіти
7. The Same
8. In the Dark
9. Equilibrium
10. Not My Delusion
11. Outro

Review: 
Forceout presents us with Melodic Death Metal that sounds Swedish but is actually from the Ukraine and guess what?
It's good, no scrap that {ha get it?} it's really good.
The production is top notch. Drum, guitar and bass are all well mixed in and it results in a very clean sound that suits this kind of music. I wasn't expecting this kind of production judging by the country and the album art.
The songs bring a lot of variation themselves, this keeps repeated listenings fresh. And the music does warrant repeated listenings.
A negative aspect could be the fact that the singing is not top of the game, compared to the way the instruments sound, it should have been able to stand out a little bit more against the competition.
It's  not easy to pick a highlight song but mine would be 'Not My Delusion', but frankly their aren't any real stinkers in here.

The cover is of course based on the title 'delusions'. I like that how normally its the evil one looking out of the mirror and here it is the other way around. The booklet contains all the lyrics (even readable this time) with some 'artistic' backgrounds but it's not bad at all. A well done package.

For my part one of the best that metal scrap records have put to disc.
Rating:


Where to buy:
http://metalscraprecords.com/shop/en/store/product/view/37/670

T.A.N.K - Spasms of Upheaval (Symbol Muzik, 2012)

Genre: Melodic Death Metal
Year: 2012 (October)
Country: France
Tracklist:

1.	Life Epitaph	01:48
2.	The Raven’s Cry	05:29
3.	Unleash the Craving	04:07
4.	Spasms of Upheaval	05:09
5.	Through the Disgrace	04:43
6.	Inhaled	04:31
7.	Slumber	00:52
8.	Conflict	03:45
9.	Stillness Withered	05:12
10.	A Life Astray	04:48
11.	Cryptic Words	04:53
12.	Daze	05:06
		50:23

Review:

The second album is for a new band is always the most important. While the first one just needs to make us familiar with the style of the band the second one needs to improve on the debut album, make sure to show us that the potential that was their on the debut is fully utilized. So the question now is, does T.A.N.K. deliver?

T.A.N.K. (Think Of A New Kind) is one of the newer bands hailing from France, playing modern sounding metal like Deboga, Gojira, and so on. They play Melodic Death Metal very derivative of Soilwork, so nothing new to be found here at first glance .

The artwork is very nice, and it might be noticed it is only released as a digipack or a digital download. No normal cd for those who prefer that. That being said the digipack is very nicely done, no complaints here.

We start with “Life epitaph” a almost mechanical sounding one riff instrumental that sets the mood for the album, the songs after that we are bombarded with decent sounding Melodic Death that lucky uses clean vocals sparingly (no mallcore here guys and girls). Everyone who listens to this album will have their own favorite tracks, there isn’t one track that is just better then the rest. That being said I would like to add that it does not mean that every song is a instant hit, there is some originality still needed to stand out. A special mention should go to the song “Inhaled” that has Jon Howard (Threat Signal) lending his voice, and what a throat that guy has.

I also like to point out that just with other modern metal bands their are some real jewels hidden in the lyrics "swayed by my inner dilemmas, I need invasive curses to breathe".  What does that even mean?

In summary this French band delivered what they promised and gave us a well-produced, melodic but heavy album that still is pretty varied. I could go on how it’s nothing new and reminds me of Soilwork and the like. But it’s definitely not a buy you would regret later.

Rating:


Where to buy?:
http://www.thinkofanewkind.com/en/tank-spasms-of-upheaval-download-buy.php