01. Scars on Scars 02. Vortex 03. 7Days 04. This is Revolution 05. Home 06. Crossfire 07. Heroes 08. Until the End 09. Resurrection 10. Road to Nowhere

I just got back from an interview with Andrea Martongelli the guitarist of Arthemis and I decided to sit down and review the album after listening to it constantly for 2 weeks.

Arthemis are a power metal thrash crossover band from Italy. They have just released their 5th studio album entitled ‘Heroes’ which went on sale on the 7th of June in the UK. The album is described as the most meaningful and heavy side of Arthemis you will see. The songs are powerful, the music is skilful, the lyrics are heart touching and the band are on top form.

I would like to talk about the lyrics on some of the songs first. Andrea told me a bit about why the album was called Heroes. Andrea’s puts it best: “You don’t have to be a superhero to help someone. You can be a hero if you save a life of someone or do something good in your normal life”. This message is quite a powerful one, when the music and the lyrics are combined it really hits home that its important to participate in life’s events rather than be a bystander. Another powerful song is ‘Scars on Scars’ which talks all about how even though life may be bad sometimes you have got to carry on living and try to be happy. Which to me best sums up humanity as a whole.
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01. Sulfur Preacher 05:19 02. Apple of Eden 04:03 03. Wave Master 04:51 04. Stranger Within 05:25 05. Monument of Shame 04:37 06. Soul Catcher 03:53 07. Unbreakable 04:32 08. Dominate and Overload 04:34 09. I Just Smile 03:59

Circle Pits. Thats what this album reminds me of. Fractures debut album ‘Dominate and Overload’ is back to back pure thrash metal goodness. The riffs are insane, the drumming is as heavy as hell and the vocals are powerful and piercing enough to unleash Satan himself from his hollow dominion in the underground. Its quite hard to belive they haven’t been signed yet as they are just as good as some of Sweden’s other bands it has to offer. One band that can give King Diamond a run for his money are definitely going to be the way forward when defending the faith of metal.
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01. Sexual Chocolate 01:24 02. A Breaking Dawn 04:21 03. Six Weeks 02:53 04. Remember Who Put You There

‘Remember who put you there’ contains influences down the lines of: Metallica, Clutch, Snot and Down. The heavy metal crusaders from Portsmouth may have just been able to match them in producing an great album consisting of 4 amazing tunes. It’s been one of my favorite albums of 2010 so far which hasn’t been from a band on a major label. One album, four tunes, one hell of a time.
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01. Veiled by Greed 05:28 02. The Siege Is On 05:06 03. What Is Worse Than The Truth 06:38 04. Soul On Auction 03:48 05. The Unholy Feast 04:49 06. Decadence Within 04:30 07. Empty 04:23 08. Wicker Man 04:43 09. Smack My Bitch Up 05:59

I’ve been aware of The More I See for sometime now. My friend lent me their first album and I found it difficult to get into and enjoy. This is a completely different case with the bands 3rd album ‘Tread the Darker Path’. With all thrash metal bands you expect amazing soaring solo’s, fast drum parts and this album fails to disappoint. The More I see have come out of their acorn shell and have developed into an oak tree of metal.
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01. The Trend 07:04 02. Coward 04:21 03. Ambush 03:21 04. Betrayed 04:34 05. 25 Seconds 04:49 06. Nowhere to Go 05:07 07. The Other Side 04:19 08. Death In Your Eyes 05:58 09. Payback 04:47 10. Romeo Delight 4:25

Expectation is a funny thing. The better you prove to be at something, the harder it seems to please people…in the musical sense, it’s often the case of the bigger the band, the bigger the monkey clinging to their back. Metallica, Slayer, even Iron Maiden - they’ve all battled the monkey at one time or another.

Well, Annihilator have one of the biggest expectation monkeys of all, almost King Kong like in stature, simply by merit of being the brainchild of Jeff Waters. Continually named in the single-figure upper echelons of those “worlds greatest guitarist” rankings that appear in the music magazines pretty much every month, the man turned down a place in Megadeth twice so he could concentrate on Annihilator, who have churned out a string of classics since 1989’s ‘Alice in Hell’.
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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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01. Infected Nation 5:33 02. Now Demolition 5:46 03. Nosphoros 5:30 04. Genocide 7:42 05. Plague To End All Plagues 5:55 06. Devoid of Thought 5:38 07. Time No More 4:00 08. Metamorphosis 7:41 09. Hundred Wrathful Deities 11:15

In this age of a rapidly accelerating music industry, the inevitable backlash to a burgeoning genre (or in this case, genre revival) seems to occur almost instantly. As soon as the ‘New Wave of Thrash’ grabbed metal press headlines in 2007, cynics and friendless naysayers were waiting to moan about bands “offering nothing new” or “cynically cashing-in on nostalgia”. Two years is a long time in the music world and it’s make or break time for many of this resurgence’s highly-publicised acts. Can they offer more than a mere throwback fix or is it all just another fad?
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