The idea of reinventing traditional Christmas carols is nothing new but only very few bands have managed to create something truly creative, moving and unique with this kind of music. The only Christmas record I listen to each year and that never stops impressing me is "Wir warten auf's Christkind" by German punk band Die toten Hosen under the Die roten Rosen moniker that mixes energizing punk rock with amusing lyrics, a few own Christmas related songs with thoughtful lyrics and refreshed traditional Christmas carols sung in German and English. I got interested by Twisted Sister's project thanks to the track "Heavy Metal Christmas" included on this record. It's a reinterpretation of the traditional "Twelve Days of Christmas" carol with self-ironic lyrics related to glam rock and heavy metal stereotypes sung by all band members in a joyous way. In addition to this, the traditionally repetitive song is filled with nice guitar licks, bass guitar solos and dynamical drum fills to keep things interesting over more than five minutes. This track is entertaining, funny and passionate, easily the best on the entire record and made me check out the entire release.

What Twisted Sister offers is a balanced mixture of Christmas carols with their traditional melodies and lyrics on one side and the typical Twisted Sister sound on the thin line between glam rock and heavy metal including some humorous lyrics and a couple of addicting hard rock riffs, short guitar solos, a tight rhythm section and melodic grounded vocals. Twisted Sister's version of "Oh Come All Ye Faithful" is very representative of the record as it is a mixture of the traditional Christmas carol and Twisted Sister's own classic "We're Not Gonna Take It" with a slight Slade touch.

After a while this usual mixture gets a little bit predictable and redundant over the course of the record. To shake things up a little bit, Twisted Sister had a good idea and invited two guest singers to perform on this album. German metal legend Doro Pesch contributes female backing vocals on "White Christmas". That's at least what press texts and encyclopedias say because her vocals must be somewhere between inaudible and non-existent. Twisted Sister missed a great occasion to add a certain something to an otherwise solid but not impressive reinterpretation of this song. The second female vocalist is much more audible as Lita Ford joins forces with Twisted Sister on "I'll Be Home for Christmas" which sounds like a glam rock ballad that could come straight from a discotheque in the early eighties. In my opinion, her vocal efforts are solid but lacking true passion for the project. Still, this is one of the better songs on the album. Otherwise, a couple of songs include background vocals by the band members as well as a few choirs here and there that add a slightly epic feeling to tracks like "Silver Bells". 

In all honesty, "A Twisted Christmas" is a pretty average record that quickly loses ist Initial charm but which may be a welcome change to children choirs in churches, Coca Cola commercials and the usual songs by Band Aid, Mariah Carey or Wham! that keep annoying people annually in shopping malls, on the radio and on television from just after Halloween until January. From this point of view, listening to Twisted Sister's at times humorous and entertaining reinterpretation of Christmas carols may feel like a relief for many rock and metal fans during that time of the year. Still, the record could have been much better with a couple of new and own Twisted Sister songs, a few better guest musicians and vocalists and a meaner and thicker production. In the end, this is the kind of music you may listen to once or twice a year in December and deservedly forget for the rest of the year. Anyway, I wish you all a merry Christmas and a happy new year.

"Suomi Warmetal" is a nice gimmick included in the ninety-fourth edition of the German "Legacy" magazine which is in my humble opinion the very best metal magazine that always delivers value for money each two months by including multiple posters, at least two and in this case even four CDs, and far over two hundred pages covering almost all genres and underground bands as much as the most famous names for a fair price. This exclusive Ensiferum EP includes four cover songs recorded as limited bonus tracks over the past few years with slightly different line-ups.

"Warmetal" is a brand new cover song which will be included on the limited edition of the upcoming "One Man Army" full length studio release in February 2015. It's a cover of the rather unknown Finnish black and doom metal band Barathrum, taken from their "Infernal" record from 1997 but the original version of this song had already been recorded as early as 1993. The cover of the occult extreme metal song is simplistic but convinces with atmospheric bleak keyboard sounds and fast extreme metal instrumental parts. Apart of a short break including sound samples from a tavern, this song has nothing to do with Ensiferum's usual folk metal. This cover could also come from any ordinary Scandinavian melodic death metal band and is therefor not really impressive. At least it sounds better than the dumb and stereotypical original.

The cover of Iron Maiden's "Wratchchild" also suffers from the fact that Ensiferum don't include any epic folk melodies and limit themselves to a generic melodic death metal sound. In addition to this, the world really doesn't need any Iron Maiden cover anymore and only very few bands such as Driving Mrs. Satan are still able to add their own creative spirit to heavy metal classics. Needless to add that it's nearly impossible to reach the high quality of the best heavy metal band in the world.

Uriah Heep's "Lady in Black" is easily the best cover on this short release. It features laid back acoustic guitar melodies, appeasing clean vocals, warm choirs and soft keyboard layers before the songs evolves with stomping mid-tempo guitar riffs and a few faster drum parts. It's a song that truly sounds like Ensiferum and that could easily fit as a folk ballad on a regular version of their albums. There is only one little problem: Uriah Heep's mysterious, rhythmic and warm original version is much better than this cover effort. 

The last track is a cover of Judas Priest's "Breaking the Law", an overrated song from an overrated record that has been covered too many times which is a sad thing as the British heavy metal legend has released a streak of impressive pioneer records in the late seventies that get rarely covered. Ensiferum's version of the hit is one of the better reinterpretations. The bass guitar play is dominating, the back choirs and keyboards are epic and the short break where we hear a horse even adds a funny touch to this folk metal version. In contrast to the first two songs on this EP, Ensiferum manages again to make this version sound like their own.

In the end, we get to hear two good cover songs where Ensiferum succeed in adding their own epic folk metal touch to the iconic originals and two weaker reinterpretations where Ensiferum sound like any other exchangeable melodic extreme metal band from Scandinavia. This release is a nice gimmick for collectors and a respectable supplement to an outstanding metal magazine but otherwise, this record is everything but essential or exciting.

I've liked to listen to selected Dornenreich songs in the past since I discovered them on the outstanding neofolk compilation "Whom the Moon a Nightsong Sings" including bands such as Empyrium, Les Discrets and Ulver. As "Freiheit" is supposed to be the last album before a longer break from the Austrian neofolk trio and as I thought the song titles sounded epic, philosophical and poetic, I decided to give an entire Dornenreich record a fair chance. 

As it turns out, I'm rather disappointed with the outcome of this release. All eight songs basically sound the same. Inoffensive acoustic guitars meet melancholic violin melodies and whispered vocals over some nature Sound samples. This kind of laid back atmosphere might work for one or two tracks but not for eight songs with a running time of more than forty-seven minutes. Most of the tracks sound too alike, pretentious and unspectacular to leave any deeper Impression and there are definitely no significant flamenco rhythms or world music elements as the press text claims. The lyrics desperately try to be intellectual and that's exactly why they aren't and turn out to be pretentious, predictable and passive.

Only two songs manage to stand out a tiny little bit. "Im ersten aller Spiele" has an unusual song structure and is quite hard to digest as an opener. Even though this unpredictable attempt at progressive song writing goes nowhere, it breaks with the more relaxed writing by numbers of the other songs. The other remarkable song happens to be "Das Licht vertraut der Nacht" because it's the only song on here which includes electric bass and guitars as well as harsher vocals that go back to the band's atmospheric black metal roots. Sadly, this emotional outburst is rather short and not impressively played either. If the band had used the contrast of truly diversified world music elements and passionate extreme metal passages more, this album would have been much more interesting.

As it turns out to be, "Freiheit" sounds tame, repetitive and dull and repeats the same calm melodies, lyrical topics and down-stripped song writing ideas over and over again. This is not at all what I associate with an epic term like freedom but rather with intellectual boredom. In my opinion, neofolk is more than acoustic guitars and violins plus poetic German lyrics over some samples of nature sounds but that's the only Thing Dornenreich offers on this hollow release. I would rather describe this effort as an acoustic songwriter output that might please to some lonesome self-consumed poets but not to truly open-minded fans of passionate world music or atmospheric extreme metal.

In its long career, Therion has released two limited compilation efforts that are nonetheless considered by the band to be regular full lengths releases. The first of these has the weird title A’arab Zaraq – Lucid Dreaming. It was released as a ten year anniversary album, and is really for faithful fans and collectors only. Occasional listeners really don’t need this offering that is by all usual measures of the band, very sub-average.

The most interesting songs on this output are the first two, which are entirely new songs left over from the Theli sessions. Both songs are atmospheric gothic doom metal tracks but don’t have the symphonic majesty and the creative classical influences of the songs on the previous output. These tracks are still diverse and enjoyable enough to listen to, but don’t impress me as much as any other songs from Theli. The next couple of songs are cover tracks and re-recordings of Therion’s past efforts. The progressive take on the Scorpions’ “Fly To The Rainbow” is definitely the highlight amongst these, and one of Therion’s best cover tracks ever.

All other songs here are connected with a soundtrack to an obscure movie entitled “The Golden Embrace” that was directed by Per Albinsson. These tracks are mostly instrumental and have much more to do with pure symphonic and classical music with an occult atmosphere than with metal. These songs inspire images in my mind and develop a certain kind of dark but elegant atmosphere. It’s really the kind of thing to listen to in your bed at night with your headphones on. After a while, the tracks become more than a bit repetitive, and the orchestrations by the Barmbek Symphonic Orchestra sound artificial and limited, as if they were cheap keyboard sounds rather than actual orchestral passages. Maybe this negative effect is also due to a limited budget at that time, as the compositional efforts themselves are not bad per se.

In the end, this compilation offers only a handful of interesting songs. Later on, Therion combined the best material of this release with the greatest songs from the other compilation entitled Crowning Of Atlantis, which was to be released in 1999. This combination, called Atlantis Lucid Dreaming and released in 2005, is worth a purchase if seen for a reasonable price. Otherwise, this record was only an appetizer for the growing fan base between the brilliant records of Theli and Vovin. This release is for die-hard fans only.

Originally written for Black Wind Metal

Kamijo is, of course, the singer of the popular Japanese power metal band Versailles, which is currently on hold. While the other members joined forces with a new singer called Zin to form the band Jupiter (which released its first full length album Classical Element in summer of 2013), Kamijo started a solo career under his own name, and has delivered his first strike entitled Heart here in autumn of 2014. While Kamijo’s solo record isn’t far from the symphonic visual kei sound of his original band, this record turns out to be quite odd, and has massive ups and downs.

As so many Japanese artists, Kamijo also delivers an interesting mix of genres. This record features some very calm music with warm organ sounds, which are wonderful to listen to in winter time and around Christmas. There are symphonic elements, but they are decently employed and neither too fluffy nor too overwhelming due to a balanced but sluggish production. Here and there, we even get to hear some swing music, which is definitely something one doesn’t hear very often on a metal album. Minimal French chanson elements here and there fit in with the francophile artist who sang about Louis XIV and the Moulin Rouge, among other subjects. The stereotypical imagery and predictable lyrics are mildly amusing, but add to the grace of the record. Still, all these elements are mixed in a coherent, harmonious, and smooth way. Don’t expect too many random genre changes in the same song. This record sounds a lot more graceful, mature, and organized than Babymetal, for example, but here lies the main problem of Heart. Despite all the diversity, the album sounds quite lame, and starts getting very boring after a while.

An important problem is the tame production of the album, which works well for the chanson, sacral, and symphonic elements, but not for the power metal foundation. The guitar riffs are not so bad, but they sound somewhat lackluster, and even the few technically well-played solos don’t feel as liberating as they should on this kind of record. The rhythm section is not mixed in the foreground either, which would have added some much needed energy to the few faster tracks. Another huge problem is the vocal performance. Kamijo convinces in exactly one single style: when he sings in a grounded, low, and melodic way – which is the case on almost every song. His repetitive vocals have an elegant tone when he performs in this style, but as soon as he tries to sing in a more emotional way, his voice has massive problems keeping its balance. This hits hard when he starts to sing for the very first time on the record in the song “Rose Croix” (where the title obviously doesn’t respect any basic French grammar rules). Kamijo’s vocals sound androgynous, dusty, and old in the first thirty seconds of the song, and his aqualung performance is only slightly improved over the course of this track. It almost sounds as if he had just recovered from a pneumonia. Another point where Kamijo’s vocals fail hard is when he is trying to hit some higher or longer notes. During the closure of “Louis”, Kamijo sounds like a tired old wolf giving its final howl. This is sending shivers down my spine, and not in a positive way.

Another item one must criticize is the lack of originality on several tracks that seem to be directly inspired by visual kei records of the past thirty years. The worst thing is that Kamijo picked the most popular bands and songs of that genre, so the cheap rehash is obvious even to someone who isn’t an expert of the genre. I’m aware of the fact that X Japan is probably the biggest act of this genre and has influenced numerous bands, but the piano part in the middle of “Louis” reminds me way too much of the groundbreaking epic “Art of Life”, even if it’s just for a few seconds. “Dakishimerarenagara” is worse yet, as almost all of its melodies are directly taken from the track “Au Revoir” from famous visual kei heavyweight Malice Mizer. Additionally, the opening symphonic passages of the somnolent ballad “Romantique” sound like a mixture of Jean-Jacques Goldman’s “La Vie Par Procuration” and Pet Shop Boys’ “It’s A Sin”. All these influences reveal what this album really is despite the numerous genres it desperately tries to cover: a commercial visual kei release with a few French chanson elements mixed in haphazardly. We can call this unblushingly calculated mainstream pop music clad in the overused imagery of French aristocracy and vampire romance. If the Twilight franchise decided to set an upcoming movie in 17th century France, this would be the perfect plastic kitsch soundtrack. It’s a record for childish female teenagers, nostalgic die-hard visual kei completists, and boring self-defined intellectuals who would like to listen to some pseudo-open-minded J-Pop while reading their newest manga import series. This album has barely to nothing to do with rock and metal music.

Once you’ve accepted that this compilation is pseudo-experimentation by the numbers without much depth, as well as a lot of idol worship, you might still find a handful of decent tracks. “Yamijo No Lion” features some speed, a few nice guitar melodies, and an epic neoclassical atmosphere. The haunted house samples towards the end make me think of the soundtrack from a Pinball computer game, but this is one of the few experiments that somehow manages to work in the context of its song, because the track has coherently progressed toward a more sinister finale. The decent “Death Parade” is one of the few tracks which isn’t a boring rehash, but rather all over the place. This oddball still has a certain intriguing feeling to it, as it features a horror-ridden atmosphere and has a strange hypnotic sound to it which is supported by almost Middle Eastern-sounding symphonic background melodies. This mixture works well, but is muddied by a guitar solo and a short narrative part that are randomly inserted and don’t add anything but confusion to a more or less messed up track. The base of this song is great, but the additional gimmicks are just distracting and even disturbing. Less would have been so much more in this perfect example of a failed attempt at creative song writing. “Moulin Rouge” mixes old-fashioned swing music and great metal guitar work with a few powerful background vocals, it has a hectic feeling to it, but it fits the topic of a hot dancing show. This is not only the most original, but also by far the best song on the entire album.

In the end, Heart could have been a fairly decent record with more powerful production, a more talented and balanced singer, and more coherent and original song writing. As it is, this commercial visual kei product is a very hit and miss product with less than a handful of decent songs and many unimpressive genre rehashes. There is no real single stinker here, but apart from the swinging “Moulin Rouge”, no track is really worth a closer look. This record is for die-hard genre fans at best.

Originally written for Black Wind Metal