The mid and late nineties have always been underestimated in terms of groundbreaking metal releases because the big names didn’t deliver at that time and because the scene didn’t get that much attention anymore. Younger generations were rather exposed to the grunge hype, the rise of alternative rock and crossover music and the proudly growing hip hop community while older fans turned away from their idols after several disappointing releases, unusually long waiting times between albums or fatal line-up changes. That’s why many people missed a couple of really essential releases and new sounds in the metal scene. While comparable bands like Absu, Amorphis, Moonspell, Orphaned Land, Sigh, Therion or Unexpect finally got some well deserved attention, the ambitious and unique avant-garde style of the symphonic extreme metal band Septic Flesh (or Septicflesh as they are called since their reunion in 2007) never got its breakthrough. If you like any of these bands, you simply can’t get around them.A Fallen Temple would be an appropriate album to start your journey with if you have missed this band until now. Sixteen years after its initial release, metal is back in strength and the amazing French label Season Of Mist where other experimental extreme metal bands like The Old Dead Tree could already release their innovating music reissued the Greek band’s fourth record.

The new version includes some additional material for collectors but it’s nothing really essential. Paradise Lost has always been overestimated in my humble opinion and that’s why I don’t need a cover song of them. “Underworld Act 3” drags on for almost eleven minutes and simply goes nowhere as it can’t mess with the first two parts. The instrumental “Finale” offers nothing intriguing either. The single version of “The Eldest Cosmonaut” is not as effective as the regular album version. These songs should have remained collector’s items only. It’s always sad when true fans purchase rare editions of their favourite bands’ releases to get all extra tracks just to see that these tracks are later reissued and available for any occasional fan. Labels don’t seem to understand that this is rather harming the weakened music industry than helping it to arise from its ashes. I don’t need dozens of different editions of the same release either. Most people are fed up with these strange release policies and prefer downloading all the extra stuff instead of purchasing the different incomplete physical products. On a positive note, the sound of the reissue is quite good and the new cover artwork pleases me more than the original one.

Anyway, let’s focus on the record which is simply brilliant. Greece’s best metal band ever has moved away from its extreme metal roots for a slower gothic and symphonic sound. The combination of grounded male clean vocals, powerful growls, female soprano vocals, a few guest vocals and a few choirs gives this record a dynamical, epic and positively sophisticated touch. The band has developed a great sense for atmospheric buildups, enchanting guitar and orchestral melodies and an amazing mixture of intriguing avant-garde ideas and a constantly coherent flow. This album even has a couple of truly catchy choruses that won’t get out of your mind. While many similar bands sound challenging and need multiple spins to open up, Septic Flesh convince at first try even though one can discover more and more elements with each spin. Even though some tracks are quite long, they never get boring and the whole record has perfectly homogenous flow that distinguishes an excellent concept album from a good one. It’s hard to point out any song because they are all at least very good and there is no negative filler included. You really need to listen to this music in one shot but once you’ve heard the first few tracks you simply don’t want to stop anymore and should feel like listening to this record until the end. If that’s not the case, this genre simply isn’t your cup of tea. I would put this record on the same level as Moonspell’s Irreligious, Therion’s Theli and Novembers Doom’s Of Sculptured Ivy And Stone Flowers.

The original album is rather hard to find and it’s great that this forgotten pearl of the nineties is back in stores now. If you care for atmospheric and innovating metal with a darker touch close to gothic and symphonic metal, this release is a definite must have.  

Gabriels is a quite obscure progressive metal band from Messina, Sicily. It’s quite hard to find any information about the band unless you speak Italian because they don’t really try hard to spread their name around the world. The band is in fact named after keyboardist and singer Gabriele “Gabriels” Crisafulli who had been active in another obscure Italian heavy metal band called Denied for a year. Formed back in 2006, Gabriels released their first full length effort The Legend Of A Prince in 2007 and after a few single releases the band is now back with a second record entitled Prophecy. The new release is a conceptual record about the horrible September 11 attacks. Recently, Italian power metal band Holy Knights already did a song about this topic and now Gabriels follow with a whole record. While the idea is honorable, the topic is pretty much worn out. The band comes a few years too late to be the first to have thought of such a conceptual release.

The music itself has its highs and lows. The opening keyboard driven instrumental “September 11” is just overlong and uninspired. That’s a quite bad way to open an album as the first impression is always what counts. If you ignore this filler, you might though discover a pretty good release after that. I have some issues with the fact that the keyboards are heavily dominating this record which might get on your nerves as well after a running time of almost seventy minutes. The production is a little bit mellow and especially the drums and guitars lack power which doesn’t help. The record includes a few weird vocal effects in the beginning and the end of the record that made me chuggle a little bit. There are a few guest musicians on this release and most of them add some inspiration but a few vocalists just sound plain awful. The worst is probably the female Colombian vocalist Ana Maria Barajas. She has already been a member of the decent Colombian all female heavy metal band Highway and is the current singer of the symphonic gothic metal band Nova Orbis but her aqualung guest vocals in “Shadows” or “Things Of The World” sound as if they were out of breath and absolutely lackluster. These songs would be so much better with an adequate guest vocalist but as they are here these tracks are almost unlistenable to me.

There are a lot of positive things to mention though. The guitar and keyboard solos are filled with epic majesty convince with hypnotizing melodies and are technically appealing. Some of them are a little bit overlong in my opinion but that doesn’t take off from their quality. The music itself should appeal to fans of Italian power metal in the style of the aforementioned Holy Knights and those who care for soft progressive metal in the vein of Dream Theater ballads. “Pray To End All Wars” is a great song for example even though it copies maybe a little bit too much from several famous progressive rock and metal bands. The epic and well elaborated “Go To Fight” is another great song inspired by the big names of the genre. The closing piano ballad “I Can’t Live Forever” has a very cinematic, symphonic and maybe even slightly world music inspired feeling. Even the female vocals sound good in here because it’s a calmer and less challenging track. Only the weird vocal effects for the narrative passages kill the track’s great atmosphere towards the end.

After all, there is a lot of light and shade on this release. Musically, this band is quite promising. A few tracks are atmospheric, harmonious and intellectually appealing. On the other side, Gabriels have to improve their concise song writing. They should invite a few more famous and talented guest musicians that can push them and grab some attention. The band should especially get rid of the stupid narrative passages in their songs. Finally, the band should maybe try to get more active on the internet and write a biography in proper English if they want to aim a more international market. Even though Prophecy has quite some flaws, I actually enjoyed listening to this release as it has a very coherent, enchanting and relaxing flow. I’m ready to hear more from this band. If you care for progressive metal, you can give this release a few spins on the band’s Bandcamp site under the following link: http://gabrielsshiro.bandcamp.com/album/prophecy

Fourteen years after his first two solo outputs, Andi Deris of Helloween, Pink Cream 69 and Kymera fame comes around with a new project under the banner of Andi Deris and The Bad Bankers. Andi Deris got together with three Spanish musicians in his Tenerife and recorded a few songs that wouldn’t fit to Helloween. The result is sarcastically entitled Million Dollar Haircuts On Ten Cent Heads.

As you might guess, a few lyrics are influenced by Europe’s current financial crisis. This is the case for the angry nu metal driven opener “Cock” that surprises with a few industrial sounds and is probably the most outstanding song on this record. “Banker’s Delight (Dead Or Alive)” hits the same vein and is driven by aggressive disharmonic riffs and a few more floating and melodic bridges in between. Along with the catchy rocker “Don’t Listen To The Radio (TWOTW 1938)” with its interesting lyrics these two songs are the other two tracks that really stand out on this release. 

The rest of the record is surprisingly mellow between some more or less hard rock inspired songs like “Will We Ever Change” that has some parts reminding me of Alice Cooper and several atmospheric mid-paced alternative rock sounds like “Blind” that reminds me of recent half-hearted Helloween ballads that would rather fit on a 30 Seconds to Mars output.

After a good start, the album gets rather boring in the second half. The songs remain superficial and are almost all hold in a sleepy mid tempo pace. They can’t really touch me from an emotional point of view or surprise me from the technical side. Many tracks are also too long against their own good. In most songs, everything is said after three minutes or even less but the tracks are stretched to lengths between four and more than six minutes. This is a problem which many metal bands seem to share. The closing acoustic track “I Sing Myself Away” is even completely useless in only two minutes and a half.

In the end, this record is rather lifeless and of an average quality at best. Only faithful Andi Deris fans should give this release a try but this definitely isn’t his finest hour. Power metal fans won’t probably like this more rock driven record and should stay away from this. It seems that Andi Deris already used his best song ideas on the last Helloween records and this is only a filler release of unconvincing material between two albums of Germany’s power metal legends. If Andi Deris waited another fourteen years to release his next solo record, nobody would really care about it and the material can only get better.