Helms Alee were formed in 2007 by Ben Verellen (of the Harkonen, Roy, and These Arms Are Snakes), Dana James and Hozoji Margullis. “Weatherhead” is a boiling mixture of fury and beauty melting together vibrating and smooth acoustic elements and raging post-hardcore riffings, delivering perfect balance of what we mainly labeled as “alternative rock” and post-metal. Dana James have a powerful and expressive voice, she both singing and howling while Ben Verellen sometimes bring some extreme raw vocals as support. “Weatherhead” sounds cutting, dirty, full of energy, but still, they built in smooth and beautiful moments which gives a gloomy shining and more dynamics to their songs and this powerful album.
The trio sliding between styles and genres, switching from metal to psychedelic, from hardcore to folk, but they do all this extremely fluidly. Read more Helms Alee – Weatherhead (2011)
Metal
Coerce – Ethereal Surrogate Saviour (2011)
Coerce was formed in late 1999 in Deal, Kent, UK by Adam Smart – Vocals, James Wells – Guitars, Chris Williams – Bass and Liam Foy – drums and hey registered the name Coerce with The Worldwide Band Name Registry, still, there’s a band using the same name from Australia… a band split between Adelaide and Melbourne formed in 2008 by Mike Deslandes, Matt Adey, Karl Roberts and Justin Bond. The Brits declare on their MySpace page that they are playing Alternative / Hardcore / Metal while the Australians defined them self playing Big Beat/German pop/Tropical…
While there’s quite much confusion – an lack of information – on both bands pages and once again, somebody chosen a name before checking out if the name is available, I take no responsibilities for any further misunderstanding.
“Ethereal Surrogate Saviour” it’s quite off of Tropical/Big Beat, actually its bring to the surface a contorted, crushy and sometimes quite chaotic and gloomy post/experimental metal with roots back to hardcore but flavored with psychedelic and progressive spices being inspired by different bands from King Crimson to Tool and Pantera. find an unique path between progressive rock and metal and the noisy, stoner/doom infiltrated post-hardcore and merging these different styles into one they came up with something quite special and exciting.
It’s not an easy listening, but life it ain’t easy and in times when almost everybody is nothing but “a copy of an imitation”, Coerce sounds absolutely refreshing, they comes like a salvation against monotony and uniformity. Read more Coerce – Ethereal Surrogate Saviour (2011)
Omega Lithium – Kinetik (2011)
“Kinetik” is the second full length album by this four piece Croatian band and they melt down dark, epic metal into the Rammstain masterd, so-called Neue Deutsche Härte industrial metal while the band is fronted by female singer Mya Mortensen. Her band-mates are Malice Rime – Guitars and Synthesizers, Zoltan Harpax – Bass and Torsten Nihill – Drums, Percussion. The band was formed in 2007 in Umag, and is signed to Drakkar Entertainment, a part of Sony BMG.
The band’s debut album, “Dreams in Formaline”, was released in 2009 and its first single, “Stigmata”, was played on the MTV rock chart and peaked to the 4 place on the MTV Adria Rock chart, receiving a constant airplay for more than 2 months. The video also appeared on other European and worldwide TV stations in their daily charts. On YouTube Stigmata received more than a quarter of a million views, which is the highest viewing number for a debut song in this genre. Read more Omega Lithium – Kinetik (2011)
August Burns Red – Leveler (2011)
Being quite skeptical ’bout everything labeled lately “metalcore”, songs such as “Internal Cannon”, “Cutting the Ties”, “Carpe Diem” and “Salt & Light” from the fourth studio album by American band August Burns Red, convinced me to give them another chance. State that they have been inspired and influenced by bands such as Between the Buried and Me, Misery Signals and Hopesfall, their powerful, technical, filled with heavy breakdowns and groovy riffs and not at least some nice, acoustic or slow passages which offering release and an exotic flavor, is quite the essence of what actually metalcore means now days. Merging some almost traditional heavy metal riffings with intense modern metal with roots back to death metal and adding raw, extreme vocals, August Burns Red comes crushing and this combination of melodious themes with blowing brutality, I had to admit, it’s quite efficient and have some charm. Still, when a million plus one bands are begun doing the same kind of thing, using the same schemes and cliches, don’t really matter how intense they doing it, all the excitement is gone and the thing becomes pretty boring. Some Pantera lyrics came back haunting: “be yourself, by yourself…” Read more August Burns Red – Leveler (2011)
Limp Bizkit – Gold Cobra (2011)
Scheduled for release on June 28, 2011, Limp Bizkit finally made their way back. All along 2010 their official web site announced that it is “the year of the Cobra” and adding the fact it’s been six years since their last release, “The Unquestionable Truth (Part 1)”, the expectations were escalate pretty high. The downside of the delayed release might be that we set our expectations too high or some might lost their interest along the way. Last year, to maintain this interest high, Fred posted teasers to the songs “Shark Attack”, “90 to 10”, “Douchebag” and “Walking Away” and “leaked out” “Why Try” last April and “Walking Away” last August. On May 17, 2011 it was released “Shotgun” as a digital download, the lead single from “Gold Cobra”. On June 7, 2011, Fred leaked the second single, “Gold Cobra” and finally the standard edition album leaked out yesterday, on June 20 2011, four days before it’s earliest release date. Read more Limp Bizkit – Gold Cobra (2011)
Dexessus – Punish me with Love (2011)
Generalizing, Dexessus might be the Russian answer for Rammstein. Metalic, heavy riffings, electrifying sampler layers, deep and strong male vocals mainly spoken and spiting the words and as a nice addition, some smoother female vocals, and this dialogue offering them a special sound, makes the difference. Marching tempos, aggressive guitars, colorful textures and the catchy themes full of adrenaline are the winning schemes of Dexessus. It reminds me – obviously – of the collaboration of Rammstein with t.A.T.u.. “Ðакажи Ð¼ÐµÐ½Ñ Ð»ÑŽÐ±Ð¾Ð²ÑŒÑŽ” (Punish Me with Love) is an absolutely correct industrial metal album from this band from Odessa. Read more Dexessus – Punish me with Love (2011)
SIN-atra – The metal tribute to Frank Sinatra (2011)
Butchering disaster. I became skeptical back in January right after I listen “New York New York” covered by Devin Townsend, an absolutely genius guy otherwise, but not even his talent and powerful voice could bring out something exciting from this project. The idea itself might be alright, but the result is horrible. Eagle Rock thought to give another shot to the team that put together “We Wish You A Metal Xmasâ€, the supergroup made of Richie Kotzen – guitar, Bob Kulick – guitars, Doug Katsaros – keyboards, Billy Sheehan – bass and Brett Chassen – drums and putting to the microphone legendary rock singers such as Glenn Hughes (ex-Deep Purple), Geoff Tate (Queensrÿche), Dee Snider (Twisted Sister), Tim “Ripper†Owens (ex-Judas Priest, ex-Iced Earth), Devin Townsend (Devin Townsend, Strapping Young Lad, etc), Robin Zander (Cheap Trick), Eric Martin (Mr. Big), Joey Belladonna (Anthrax), Doug Pinnick (King’s X), Jani Lane (ex-Warrant), Franky Perez (Scars on Broadway) and Elias Soriano (Nonpoint). So, only and exclusively a line-up made of (rock) super-stars. Read more SIN-atra – The metal tribute to Frank Sinatra (2011)
Of Mice and Men – The Flood (2011)
For a year or two I’m at least suspicious if not directly sick only when I hear of “indie” or “alternative” labels, this year I got myself a new syndrome, I get sick when I hear of “metalcore”. Too many faceless bands does the same kind of shit and it becomes pretty boring. Fortunately there are always few exception, and talking bout metalcore, Of Mice and Men are still manage to put on the table exciting materials.
The band was formed by Austin Carlile – original vocalist of Attack Attack! – and bassist Jaxin Hall during mid-2009 after Carlile’s departure from his former band. After reaching 1,000,000 plays from their Myspace profile in just two months since its launch, the band uploaded a cover of Lady Gaga’s song, “Poker Face” and a copy of the demo was sent directly to Rise Records.
The band released their self-titled debut album in March 2010. On “The Emptiness Tour” in 2010 Carlile fell in to a conflict with the other members and the band and Carlile decided to part ways. The group thereafter invited Jerry Roush – vocalist for Sky Eats Airplane and American Me – to front Of Mice & Men. But after nine months the group confirmed in January 2011 that they reached a decision to have Jerry Roush leave Of Mice & Men in favor for former vocalist and founding member, Austin Carlile to return to the group. Read more Of Mice and Men – The Flood (2011)
Versailles – Holy Grail (2011)
This is the third album by the Japanese visual kei metal band Versailles – also known as Versailles -Philharmonic Quintet. Pretty strange combination of classic heavy and power metal with sometimes theatrical, opera-like vocals, other times pretty typical Japanese, pop taste vocals. “Visual kei”, literally “visual style” or “visual system”, is a movement among Japanese musicians,that is characterized by the use of make-up, elaborate hair styles and flamboyant costumes, and Versailles key characteristics are their rococo-esque costumes, correlated musically with dueling guitar sounds – Iron Maiden’s trademark – and heavy but melodic arrangements.
The band was formed in 2007 by Kamijo (ex-Lareine), Hizaki (ex-Sulfuric Acid), and Jasmine You (ex-Jakura). Later, Teru (ex-Aikaryu) and Yuki (ex-Sugar Trip). Read more Versailles – Holy Grail (2011)
Queensryche – Dedicated To Chaos (2011)
I cut the crap and I’m gonna tell you directly what to aspect: if you’re looking for a quality and quite exciting hard rock album, “Dedicated To Chaos” might just fit your taste. Those who still waiting for what actually meant till ’88/’90 (the genius “Operation: Mindcrime” (1988), respectively “Empire” (1990), well, maybe it’s time to accept that “this” Queensrÿche is not “that” Queensrÿche anymore and probably they will never be again. On the other hand, while I was absolutely disappointed by their previous effort, the quite pale “American Soldier” released two years ago, “Dedicated To Chaos” is an absolutely fair material, a mixture of hard and heavy schemes with maximum taste and the unquestionable skill of writing and playing of these guys from Seattle. Because it’s almost impossible to avoid comparison, it’s somewhere between “Promised Land” (1994) and “Empire” (1990) with a taste of experimental sounds from “Tribe” (2003). And I must say: this is far the best Queensrÿche album for almost two decades. Read more Queensryche – Dedicated To Chaos (2011)
