01. The Ballad of Solomon Eagle 05:17 02. Vagrant Stomp 04:49 03. The Ale House Braves 03:49 04. Cities of Frost 05:34 05. Hot Knives and Open Sores 04:21 06. Hounds Ditch 05:30 07. Mortlake (Dead Water) 02:11 08. They Come Back (Harvest of Skulls) 04:43 09. Beginners Guide to Suicide 08:05

The racket Orange Goblin specialise in tends to be referred to as ‘stoner metal’. Indeed, they’re reputed to be the UK’s premier exponents of that particular sub-genre. They epitomised that style on their standout third album, 2000’s ‘The Big Black’, but since then have been moving in a more traditional heavy-metal direction. By the time their sixth album, 2007’s ‘Healing Through Fire’ rolled around, staple traditional stoner tracks like ‘Scorpionica’ were a thing of the past. Sure, there are hints of it at various points on ‘Healing Through Fire’, it’s definitely still an influence, but to be honest you’d be hard pressed to actually define this as a stoner metal record. I don’t know what you’d call it, really…it’s just really fucking metal.

‘Healing Through Fire’ is all brash, swaggering aggression, a rousing drunken salute to heavy music. That lively, stomping tone is set right from the outset with ”The Ballad of Solomon Eagle“, which is by no means a ballad in the traditional sense. Although from Orange Goblin, I doubt you were expecting “Total Eclipse of the Heart” anyway…which isn’t to say I wouldn’t give a kidney to hear them cover that. It’s hard to explain, really, but listening to this album makes me feel like my hair isn’t nearly long enough, and gives me a sudden impulse to grow a large mountain-man style beard, behind which I can stomp around glaring at people. Tracks like “Ale House Braves” and “Hounds Ditch” typify this kind of feeling; it’s the kind of song you expect to find playing in one of those dingy bars populated entirely by bikers and stereotypical ‘road people’ out of Kerouac novels who hop freight trains. Even the barman has a denim jacket, and tattoos on his face, and there’s probably an underground fight club in the basement. It’s pure attitude music.
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01. Badge And A Gun 3:40 02. In The City 3:10 03. You Belong To Me 4:06 04. Mrs. Operator 3:12 05. Higher & Higher 4:53 06. Too Much 3:34 07. Fortune And Fame 3:00 08. Superman 4:32 09. You 3:20 10. Champagne, Chicks & Rock n’ Roll 2:28

‘Fuck me, not another band covered in tattoos.’
- Christopher Persuad-Jagdhar, The Wildhearts

Originality seems to be something of a problem in music these days; regardless of which genre a band are considered to be a part of, more often than not there will be older acts with whom they share similarities. This is largely true of the recent wave of Swedish rock och roll seen on Ragnarok of late, but is it true of Mama Kin?

Named after a track on Aerosmith’s first album, they play soulful melodic rock. The album starts with a police siren (like Guns N’ Roses’ ‘Appetite For Destruction’) and goes on to paint a sleazy picture of the rock ‘n’ roll city of… erm, Karlstad (like Guns N’ Roses’ ‘Appetite For Destruction’). The band’s personnel have a cool glam image (like Guns N’ Roses’ ‘Appetite For Destruction’). However, it sounds very little like Guns N’ Roses’ ‘Appetite For Destruction’, and to be fair, it would be extremely difficult for a band to live up to such a seminal work - but hey, no one said they were trying to, and who says that unoriginality strictly has to be a bad thing?
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01. My Heart Cries Out For You 04:44 02. Dark Journey 04:52 03. Land Of Street Survivor 04:17 04. Pay the Price 03:27 05. Destiny’s Call 04:54 06. Evil Masquerade 05:04 07. Running Out Of Time 04:35 08. Spellbound 04:37 09. Only The Strong Will Survive 03:29 10. Epic 04:38

‘Where the Eagles Fly’ and indeed the band responsible, Dark Illusion, inspire a strange conflict within me. I’m almost perfectly evenly divided between two opposing forces, and I really can’t decide which side of the fence to fall on. To that end, I’m going to do something a bit fruity and effectively write two reviews of this album. Each side will make their case, and I’ll leave it down to you, the reader, the civilian jury, to decide who wins. To start with, here’s the case from the prosecution, led by the part of me that’s an angry misanthropic shit of a man.

I don’t want this to turn into a philosophical debate about the nature of creativity and originality, but let’s face it, your classic melodic power metal isn’t a genre steeped in fresh ideas and innovation. Dark Illusion are a perfect example of this. I mean, to start with the first thing you saw up there, all of the songs are just named after the most-repeated line in the song. The album itself is named after a line from the chorus of the first song. They didn’t even have enough inspiration to come up with a couple of extra words. What makes it even worse is that all of said lines are pure cheesy filth as well.
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01. Express Death 06:59 02. Pyramids 06:46 03. Paper Walls 05:48 04. He Dives Down 06:56 05. Terra Incognita 09:04 06. Lucky Me, Lucky You 04:14 07. Super Globe Of Pain 06:27 08. The Electric Hour 05:17

I’ll get it out of the way right from the start - Switch Opens are a Swedish metal band. Yeah, I know, you’re probably scuttling for cover toward the stereotype of all those identical ‘Gothenburg scene’ melodic death metal bands…but fear not. To start with, Switch Opens are from Stockholm, some 300 miles away from Gothenburg. And when it comes to metal, their sound too is a comparable distance away.

No, this isn’t another melodeath screamathon. To be honest, I’m not entirely sure what it is. It’s really quite fascinating to dream up a list of Switch Opens’ probable influences while listening through this album - they create a haze of fuzz that screams Kyuss, but some of their riffs sound more rooted in Southern Metal, with the likes of Down or Corrosion of Conformity. Their down ’n’ dirty groove kind of puts you in mind of Motörhead, albeit a more doomy Motörhead, maybe on Valium…and on top of that, they appear to share a name with a Soundgarden song. Putting all of that together, I suppose, makes this seem like the work of hairy stoners.
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05. I’m On My Way 4:49 06. I Don’t Give A Good God Damn 3:03 07. Bad Father, Bad Son 3:06 08. Ain’t It December 3:26 09. Black Eyes On A Saturday 5:42 10. MTV Killed Rock N’ Roll 4:28 11. Medicine 3:14 12. Die Beautiful 3:56 13. Move To Detroit 2:56 14. Jona Song 3:24 15. Demolition Man 6:02

Sweden has given us some great things over the years… meatballs… Vikings… that’s all I can think of at the moment. It has also produced the likes of Arch Enemy, Opeth and Bathory when it comes to extreme metal, and then there’s the more straightforward rockin’ bands like The Hellacopters, Backyard Babies, and Europe (hey, they were pretty good when you listened past ‘The Final Countdown’). Von Benzo fit into the latter of these two camps, but don’t quite inspire in the same way.

Opener ‘And The Dead Said No’ has a very cool intro, and a lovely feeling that something spectacular is about to be unleashed; like slowly taking the lid off of a box marked ‘FREE SWEETS’. Sadly, the song is a less-than-memorable rock standard, what would be a very nice pre-chorus turning out to be the chorus itself; like looking inside the box to discover the sweets are all mint humbugs or coffee Revels. This sets a precedent for a what is largely a whole album of cannon fodder.
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01. Dirt Bound 03:43 02. Hard Livin’ Man 03:18 03. No Doubt About It 03:59 04. Straight Shooters 03:33 05. Elvis Chapel Blues 04:35 06. Fill Your Head With Rock 05:12 07. Dog 03:15 08. A Shot Of You 03:22 09. Butter You Up 03:34 10. Swan Song 04:10 11. Sicker Than I Think 03:44

I have a hard time believing that Bonafide are actually Swedish. There’s something deeply 80s Americana about them. This is a band who fantasise about fast cars, sleep in leather jackets, and use a gang chant of “hell yeah” as about 40% of their backing vocals. Everything about their image and their music suggests they’re probably from California…but they’re not. They’re just trying really, really hard to be.

Seriously, has anyone informed Bonafide what decade it is? This album really sounds like it should be playing over the end-credits of a rubbish 80s road-trip movie. I can’t listen to opening track ’Dirt Bound’ without seeing a slow-motion high-five, and maybe a red sports car tearing off into a California sunset. And it goes on in the same fashion, attempted hard-rock anthem after attempted hard-rock anthem. You barely even notice the gaps between songs, it’s just a montage of spandex-clad riffs, facepalm-inducing backing vocal harmonies and predictable guitar solos. Now, I’ve never said a bad word in my life about guitar solos, and yet here Bonafide are trying to make me be that guy. You just see theirs coming a mile off. A lot like everything else in their music, really.
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01. Set Guitars To Kill 05:29 02. A Little Bit Of Solidarity Goes A Long Way 03:25 03. Clench Fists, Grit Teeth…Go! 06:19 04. Capture Castles 07:17 05. Start A Band 04:53 06. Tip Of The Hat, Punch In The Face 04:21 07. If It Ain’t Broke…Break It 06:21 08. These Riots Are Just The Beginning 4:48 09. Don’t Waste Time Doing Things You Hate 07:31 10. The Voiceless 6:27 11. Eat The City, Eat It Whole 07:35

Hey, you. Ever heard of a band from Northern Ireland called ‘And So I Watch You From Afar’? I suppose it might be unlikely, but they’ve been making something of a name for themselves with their early releases and various bombastic live performances. Kerrang! actually claimed that “they can do nothing wrong”, and a host of other publications from NME to Metal Hammer have lined up to sing their praises. Not bad, really, for a progressive instrumental outfit from Belfast…and frankly, all of the praise they’ve been attracting is entirely merited.

After recording two EPs, ’This Is Our Machine And Nothing Can Stop It’ and ’Tonight The City Burns’, their self-titled debut was released in April 2009 by Smalltown America Records, the independent label run by fellow Brit post-rock proggers Jetplane Landing. And yet, I’ve only just noticed it. My bad.
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October of last year saw the tragic, untimely demise of Evile bassist Mike Alexander. For such a young band said to be ‘carrying [thrash metal]’s revival on their shoulders’, it really was a shock to the community, and for a short time their future as a group was in doubt. Thankfully, fortune smiled upon them with the arrival of new bassist Joel Graham, and a UK tour to further promote new full-length ‘Infected Nations’ (and its Maidenesque cover art) and keep the metal flag flying high.

Israel’s The Fading do their best to work up tonight’s (notably young) crowd, with some textbook stage banter and melodeath frettery. The venue is more empty than half-full, and polite applause and a small, brief moshpit is just about the only response from the crowd, apart from the usual support band-piss-taking jeers from the lads at the bar. Compared to them, Calfornia’s Warbringer are the bomb. Some tasty Exodus-y noise is battered out by the fivesome, who have the long-haired, beer-drinking, pot-smoking, cop-bothering thrash image down to a tee; the kind of American headbangers you see in the likes of Wayne’s World or Bill & Ted. Vocalist John Kevill has something of an early Mike Patton about him, throwing shapes and pulling mad faces as ‘Living In A Whirlwind’ becomes a reality; the first of many circle pits has begun.
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01. Valley of the Damned 04:17 02. Hang Him High 04:35 03. Solar Empire 05:15 04. Weed Out the Weak 03:50 05. No Tomorrow 04:16 06. Global Domination 05:14 07. Taste the Extreme Divine 03:36 08. Alive 04:21 09. The Quest 05:31 10. Tamed (Filled With Fear) 04:39 11. Sky’s Falling Down 04:31

Peter Tägtgren is something of a legend in his own right, thanks to his impressive list of production credits; he’s produced albums by Children of Bodom, Amon Amarth, Dimmu Borgir, Sabaton and Celtic Frost. In fact, he even managed to poach drummer Horgh from black metal legends Immortal (yes, those guys from the forest - Youtube “Call of the Wintermoon” if you don’t know what I mean) for his own band, Hypocrisy.

Hypocrisy have been around on the death metal scene for 20 years, now. They’ve released ten albums since 1992, and now grace us with the eleventh, “A Taste of Extreme Divinity”. Their pedigree has never been in doubt - for example, Children of Bodom axe-master Alexi Laiho teamed up with them on the tour for latest album - but theirs is not a name which has been on the lips of the metal community of late. The hope was that this latest effort would see them returned to the forefront of the oh-so-convoluted Swedish death metal scene.
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01. World Painted Blood 05:53 02. Unit 731 02:39 03. Snuff 03:42 04. Beauty Through Order 04:36 05. Hate Worldwide 02:52 06. Public Display of Dismemberment 02:34 07. Human Strain 03:09 08. Americon 03:22 09. Psychopathy Red 02:26 10. Playing with Dolls 04:13 11. Not of this God 04:20

It can’t be easy, being Slayer. They were really too good in the 80s; releasing four classic albums in a row tends to build expectation for your subsequent work. Hence the 90s were a darker time for the thrash icons, as a string of questionable releases threatened to impinge upon their legacy. Reuniting the ‘classic’ lineup in 2001 with the return of Dave Lombardo on drums was a step in the right direction, but 2006’s “Christ Illusion” left many disappointed. So, even before its release, their 10th album “World Painted Blood” had quite a burden on its shoulders.

Kerry King has stated that this is Slayer’s most diverse album since 1990’s “Seasons in the Abyss”, and from the start, definite comparisons spring to mind. Titular opener ’World Painted Blood’ is, at almost 6 minutes in length, probably the longest Slayer song that springs to mind since ’Seasons’ itself, although for the most part it gallops along at an almost frightening pace. There are also a couple of other longer songs, ‘The Human Strain’ and ‘Playing With Dolls’, which attempt a slower tempo than the band’s usual 100-mile-an-hour thrash, and even flirt with melody - the latter actually standing out as one of the album’s strongest. ‘Beauty Through Order’ perfectly showcases how this slower, more melodic approach can coexist with classic thrash-Slayer, opening at an almost sedate pace before undergoing a lycanthropic transformation and finishing at breakneck pace.
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