• Servantes - Инфант / Infant (2014)

    Servantes is a melodic metal band from Moscow that mixes elements of hard rock, traditional heavy metal and European power metal to an entertaining but in the end somewhat superficial first full length effort. The melodic keyboards are smartly employed throughout the record and may add a dark, joyous or progressive tone to the different tunes. While the melodic guitar work is great, it’s lacking a unique signature style. The vocals are well performed and should please to any melodic metal fan but I’m missing an edgier and more expressive style here and there. The rhythm section is mostly unspectacular apart of a few selected exceptions. Still, the harmonious and rocking flow of the record and the clever use of a few well selected experiments that never go too far and sound well integrated into the songs rate this record up and make it thoroughly enjoyable.

    The most outstanding song on here is the energizing hard rock anthem “Судьба Пьеро” with its happy piano work, its great classic rock guitar solo, a short bass guitar solo and even a more diversified use of percussions in the middle part. Maybe Servantes would even be a better band if it performed mainly classic and hard rock music instead of heavy and power metal. My second favourite track on the album is probably the dark and plodding “Я зажигаю рассвет” with its nearly cinematic oriental folk sounds that add some more depth to the release but I must admit that I’m pretty much into this kind of music even though it has been overused in the genre over the past few years. The use of almost dark wave sounding keyboards before the faster power metal inspired middle part in the catchy “Дуэль” may only last for a few seconds but makes this track stay on my mind. The joyous power metal tune “Столица” has an almost sacral tone and the decent use of grounded female back vocals only adds to that celebrative atmosphere.

    There is a lot of light on this release but also some shade. “Война” employs too many keyboard passages and comes along with a weird guest singer that somewhat tries to sound like Jorn Lande on an Avantasia record. Humorously, the guest singer actually sounds as if he was a little bit drunk. At least, this is an entertaining track but it’s not exactly excellent material. The longest tune on the release is the ballad “Я ослеп” that includes synths of classical instruments, an average acoustic guitar performance, lifeless riffs and exchangeable melodic vocals. The whole song would have been average fill material if it had been three minutes shorter but sadly the unimpressive potpourri drags on for almost seven minutes. For some obscure reason, the second epic track on the release which is the album closer “Застывшая симфония” almost sounds like its musical twin. In my opinion, power metal ballads are either really moving or rather unimpressive as there seems to be no average power metal ballad. Servantes tend to write the second kind of ballads and end an otherwise solid record on a weaker note. In the future, they should simply leave out the calmer and pseudo-progressive sounds as the band really convinces in the shorter and rocking tunes.

    In the end, Servantes delivers an entertaining melodic metal release with a few rock infused parts and a handful of successful open-minded experiments. The band always convinces when it adds a few colourful effects, decides to rock out and writes short and consistent material. The epic tracks and especially the ballads are rather shallow and lack originality. Melodic rock and power metal fans should enjoy this warm-hearted release enough to give it a few spins but it surely doesn’t reinvent the genre and won’t leave a deeper impression after all: http://metalism.bandcamp.com/album/infant

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  • Einherjer - Av oss, for oss (2014)

    The Norwegian trio of Einherjer delivers the best Viking Metal album of the year with their sixth studio album entitled “Av Oss, For Oss”. The record includes everything a gripping genre record needs: epic and almost cinematic atmospheres with a few small folk sounds here and there in the opening instrumental tune or in some bridges, authentic Norwegian lyrics performed by bleak yet surprisingly chilling black metal vocals, gripping and heavy doom metal riffs, a couple of classic melodic heavy metal guitar soli that lighten up the atmosphere and a couple of occasional sing-along parts in the bridges that make you think of heroic Viking hordes.

    While the album has a great flow and works as a whole, three songs really stand out for me. First of all, there is the first single “Nidstong” which is one of the few upper mid-tempo tracks on here. The song doesn’t have anything like a chorus but the reoccurring vocal lines and riffs are quite catchy. There is no doubt that this is the most accessible song on the album. On the other side, mysterious chants add some depth to the straighter song writing in the bridges. These chants could also fit to a gothic metal band. Another big surprise comes in form of a melodic rock ‘n roll guitar solo in the middle part. The solo adds a fresh touch to the darker atmosphere and manages not to sound out of place. The more I listen to this record the more original details I manage to discover.

    “Nord Og Ner” is one of the darker and straighter songs on the album and stands out between the more epic tracks. The middle passage features raw and simplistic guitar riffs and a dominating rhythmic bass guitar accompanied by precise drum patterns that make my head and legs shake. The instrumental passage makes the solid song truly remarkable.

    The fitting closing track “Av Oss, For Oss” is an atmospheric epic anthem far over ten minutes that manages to mix musical diversity with catchy melodies. The song has its laid back orchestral keyboard passages that transmit harmony and melancholy in equal parts on one side but also the bleakest black metal vocal parts on the entire album on the other. This majestic mixture of almost progressive esthetics and natural emotions recalls and probably even equals genre classics from iconic bands such as Bathory and Falkenbach. This worthy title song is probably one of the very best songs ever written by the band and it grows with each spin.

    Anybody who cares for atmospheric, emotional and epic Viking Metal from Månegarm over Moonsorrow to Týr should definitely purchase this most recent record by this extremely underrated band. Try to grab the limited digipack edition that includes the bonus track "Blodsbånd" as well. The perfectly coherent album has a lot of depth, progressivity and a bleak yet beautiful soul that invites you to plunge into a heroic, nostalgic and raw world of past glory. This record easily grabs one of the top spots on my list of this year’s very best releases.

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  • Kypck / Kursk - Имена на стене / Names on the Wall (2014)

    Kypck is a Finnish doom metal quintet with a faible for Russian language and history. Finnish melancholy meets the Russian soul on the three studio records the band has delivered so far. The group is named after a city where the world’s deadliest tank battle took place in 1943 that caused around a quarter of a million casualties during World War II. Kursk is also the name of a nuclear submarine that sank in Barents Sea in 2000 which caused 118 casualties. The band’s music and lyrics are as sinister as these two events and deal with loss, pain and war.

    On an interesting side note, the band features two members of the legendary defunct gothic metal band Sentenced while singer Erkki Seppänen should be known to European power metal fans as singer of the band Dreamtale. His outstanding vocals are expressive, low, melancholic, melodic and throaty and he performs the Russian lyrics quite well as he is an experienced instructor at a language school.

    While the vocals are half the charm of the band, the haunting guitar melodies are the other half and have a really unique touch. The band also includes dark and doom orientated riffs supported by low bass guitar sounds and a slow to mid-tempo driven destructive drumming but what stands out are the melancholic, nostalgic and slightly psychedelic melodies that feel like emotional outbursts for hope in all the drowning darkness.

    This band is all about authentic bleak atmospheres and even the visual side of the instruments support this tendency as Sami Lopakka’s guitar looks like an AK-47 while Ylä-Rautio’s bass has only one string and looks like an old military weapon. The band even has its own Lada painted in a nostalgic military green colour with the band logo painted on it. The booklets present the band members trimmed on old and bleak pictures. The most recent booklet features pictures from the ghost town of Pripyat in Ukraine that was abandoned a few days after the Chernobyl disaster in 1986. This historical event has always fascinated me and Kursk’s new record feels like a trip through the ill-fated town near the border with Belarus.

    From the first seconds of “Prorok”, the band builds up a depressing, haunting and psychedelic atmosphere with simple but effective melodies, a surprisingly vivid rhythm section and thunderous, low and intentionally repetitive riffs that are hard to digest. The narrating vocals sound accusing, emotional and melancholic and are sometimes supported by uneasy whispers in the background. The song represents the entire record quite well. The track is uneasy, raw and depressing as it seems to be hard to digest at first contact but the characteristic guitar melodies and the melodic chorus are incredibly hypnotizing and grow with each spin.

    The title song “Imya Na Stene” is one of the most melodic and memorable tracks on here as the song is a little bit more vivid, shorter and to the point than the rest. Guitar melodies and vocals are filled with this distinctive mixture of Finnish melancholy and Russian soul. The chorus crowns this authentic, bleak and eerie doom metal track and won’t get out of your head anytime soon.

    The following “Voskresenie” fathoms the other extreme and evokes strong negative emotions. It’s clearly one of the most disturbing tracks on the entire record. The song is dominated by noisy bass guitar riffs, extremely low and distorted guitar riffs, a dissonant guitar solo, mean guttural vocals and throaty laughter.

    It’s quite a challenge to sing about the fate of children in a concentration camp. “Deti Birkenau” overcomes the potential risks of either writing a hypocritical, moralistic and whining tune on one side or a too condescending, explicit and superficial track on the other. The song is intense in meaning and music as melodies and lyrics filled with calm and low glimmers of hope meet an epic and yet reserved atmosphere of ongoing sadness and suffering. The track has a melodic clean vocal approach, supported by slow melancholic guitar melodies, distorted background riffs and a heavy slow rhythm section. The song also has a few up-tempo parts with hopeful energy and heavenly melodies that soon turn into a repetitive, fatalistic and yet consoling numbness. The philosophical song somehow fits the topic perfectly and sends shivers down my spine. As somebody who has already visited a concentration camp, this masterpiece brings back the depressive despair, bleak fear and destructive hate I had felt when I visited this essential memorial of the grisliest crimes humans not worth being called humans can commit against others.

    You can believe me that the rest of the record is just as atmospheric as the first four songs even though the intensity decreases a tiny little bit towards the end. That's why I'm confident that this unique quintet can still increase its musical intensity and its song writing qualities to surpass this excellent highlight and create an undisputable genre milestone one day. You definitely need to spend some time and be in a receptive mood to fully digest this accusing, angry, bleak, consoling, dark, depressing, disturbing, grisly, hopeful, hypnotizing, melancholic, menacing, mysterious, nihilistic, psychedelic and sad record but it's really worth to dig yourself into this album. If you are looking for an emotional, melodic and intellectually challenging doom metal release, you definitely can’t find anything better than this output in the year 2014.

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  • Ария / Aria - Через все времена / Through All Times (2014)

    Ария (Aria) is a criminally underestimated heavy metal band from Moscow that has the same reputation in Russia as Iron Maiden and the likes have in the United Kingdom. The band definitely deserves this recognition as Aria has been around since 1985 when playing this kind of Western music was still officially frowned upon by the Soviet Union. Aria broke the ice by being a pioneer band of that genre and coincidentally a certain Mikhail Gorbachev became the leader of the Soviet Union in the same year and would consecutively introduce important changes leading to the end of the Cold War six years later. Twenty-nine years, eleven studio albums, ten compilation records and seven live releases after its foundation, Aria is still the most important heavy metal band of its country. Recently, the band has opened towards the international market and has toured in Germany in 2012 and even in Canada and the United States of America in 2013. Collaborations with Danish brewery Faxe and American motorcycle manufacturer Harley-Davidson have also helped spreading the name of the band. If you care for heavy metal music, then you have no excuse for not knowing essential classics such as “Волонтёр” (“The Volunteer”, 1985), “Без тебя” (“Without You”, 1986), “Герой асфальта” (“Hero Of Asphalt”, 1987), “Улица роз” (“Rose Street”, 1987), “Игра с огнём” (“Play With Fire”, 1989) “Кровь за кровь” (“Blood For Blood”, 1991), “Штиль” (“Calm”, 2001) and “Колизей” (“Colosseum”, 2003) among others. Three years ago, Aria changed vocalist and introduced the young and talented singer Mikhail Zhitnyakov to the band. Since then, the band has released the strong studio album “Феникс” (“Phoenix”) which was its first in more than five years, the incredible “Live In Studio” release where the band plays twelve heavy metal classics in a crunching, fresh and unfiltered way and the majestic live album “В жёлтом круге арены” (“In The Yellow Circle Arena”) which is probably the band’s best live record ever. Aria seems to be rejuvenated and have been quite active over the past few years. It’s no surprise then that the band already comes around with a new studio album entitled “Через все времена” (“Through All Times”) this year.

    Aria has always been faithful to the traditional hard rock and heavy metal sound without sounding repetitive, uninspired or outdated. When other bands tried to experiment with groove, industrial or progressive metal, Aria had always held the heavy metal banner high. Still, the band doesn’t sound like one of those juvenile revival bands that try to sound old school. The crystal clear and dynamical production of the new record fits modern standards in a positive way. The lyrics here and there are inspired by contemporary books, movies or television series. In a few moments, there are even a few modern sounds in form of a few symphonic keyboard sounds but they are always decently put in the background. They only become obvious in the opening of “Город” (“City”) where one could even describe them as eerie lounge sounds that slowly introduce a mellow, melancholic and hypnotizing heavy metal track with a softly sung but memorable chorus cracking the seven-minute mark. It’s the kind of traditional heavy metal song with a slightly atmospheric, modern and progressive touch that could also come from one of the last four Iron Maiden records for example. 

    “Блики солнца на воде” (“Glare At The Sun”) is also one of the more experimental songs. It opens with slow guitar riffs that could easily come from a country rock song or the score of a western. The verses are slow and sound really cool while the pre-chorus and chorus are heavier and feature thick guitar sounds and high vocals. This country metal song meets a slow atmospheric middle section with silently played but still slightly galloping bass guitars and drums before the melodic mid-tempo guitar solos lead us back to the powerful chorus. While the song has obvious traditional heavy metal elements, it sounds like nothing I have ever heard before because of its hard rock and country influences that give it a very cool and almost cinematic mood. You can literally see a gunslinger riding through the wasteland and coming to a town in the Wild West while listening to this song. 

    Iron Maiden has always been an obvious reference for this band. In the beginning, the band almost copied passages from classic records but later on this worship has turned into a less obvious and more creative inspiration. While Iron Maiden tend to write overlong tracks with pointless soloing these days, Aria still manage to write consistent, enthralling and precise short to mid-length songs with lengths between four and a half and seven and a half minutes. The opening title song Через все времена” (“Through All Times”) has everything a heavy metal fan can ask for. The up-tempo track features a charismatic and dominating galloping bass guitar line, powerful staccato-drumming as well as aggressive and impulsive riffs that meet breaks with mid-tempo twin-guitar harmonies and solos. The whole thing is crowned by vocals that find the right balance between grounded power and a few enthusiastically sung higher notes. This track is a strong candidate for the best heavy metal song of the year.

    The rest of the album is good average heavy metal that doesn’t disappoint but it can’t quite keep up with the explosive opening trio. Most songs sound like standard heavy metal songs but in Aria’s case we are still talking about a high standard. The band keeps on varying its approaches as we can the laid-back and plodding ballad “Точка невозврата” (“Point Of No Return”) which isn’t really my cup of tea, the slow-paced and eerie epic “Зов бездны” (“Call Of The Deep”) that is maybe a little bit too tame and long for its own good and a short stomper like “Ангелы неба” (“The Angels Of Heaven”) which sounds like a slower and more atmospheric version of Iron Maiden’s “Two Minutes To Midnight”.

    In the end, what we have here is a below average Aria album, an above average traditional heavy metal release and probably the best heavy metal album of the year 2014 at the same time. Aria keeps a dying genre alive and they do it with a diversified song writing approach without losing the genre’s clear guiding line, a solid dose of honest enthusiasm and a rejuvenated sound in terms of production, keyboard layers and vocals. Fans of the band should be satisfied with this record while new fans could start right of with the “Live In Studio” effort that will blow you away, introduce you to the current line-up and present you a significant number of Russian heavy metal classics at the same time.

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