Cruachan Interview
A week or two back I thought about interviewing Cruachan given their lineup changes and album coming up. So I reached out to Keith Fay and got more news than just the interview.
Continue reading →Rating: 9.1/10 Release: 16 October 2020 Label: Napalm Records Skalmöld’s 10th anniversary effort Live in Reykjavik not only checks all the boxes for a great live album, with excellent fidelity to the studio releases, a good audience, and minimal filler but due to the wide range of Skalmöld material can also … Continue reading →
A week or two back I thought about interviewing Cruachan given their lineup changes and album coming up. So I reached out to Keith Fay and got more news than just the interview.
Continue reading →Rating: 7.8/10 Release: 1 October 2020 Label: Independent / Bandcamp Protokult’s Transcending the Ruins has the makings of a fantastic album, and in many ways it is just that. There are however, one or two musical tendencies that pop up across the album which, while they improve song quality on … Continue reading →
After reviewing their new album, Redneck Vikings from Hell, I reached out to Aether Realm for an interview. The guys from the band seemed very open to the idea, and we got some excellent meaningful answers in reply about the background of the album, how the pandemic affected the industry, and some of their self-referential songs.
Rating: 7.7/10 Release: 15 May 2020 Label: Independent My first real exposure to Celtica Pipes Rock was the Steamphonia album. As a fan of both Steampunk and Celtic Folk music, it seemed to me like the perfect combination. While there might be a degree of subjective bias, Steamphonia will be … Continue reading →
Rating: 8/10 Release: 6 April 2020 Label: Symmetric Records Despite a somewhat underwhelming start, Validor’s latest effort combines all the best of Pulp Fantasy, warrior sagas, and good old no-frills heavy metal riffs into what ends up being a promising Power Metal album, in the same vein as the auld … Continue reading →
Rating: 9/10 Release: 1 May 2020 Label: Napalm Records Æther Realm’s latest release is by far their most extensively differentiated. Since their debut took a while to grow on me, I was rather surprised of the immediacy of impact that Redneck Vikings From Hell had on a track by track … Continue reading →
Rating: 8.0/10 Release: 28 February 2020 Label: Independent / Bandcamp Noituma’s latest effort Tervahauta, from start to finish is highly reminiscent of Helloween’s first keeper album. Despite the stark difference in genres, both Tervahauta and the Keeper albums have an overarching concept but each song sounds almost completely different from … Continue reading →
Rating: 8.3/10 Release: December 2019 Label: Earth and Sky Productions For those who aren’t aware, the latest release from self-styled Barbarian Metallers, GOD, is in fact an infamous lost album that were recorded in Portugal in 2009 under a different name. While two of the tracks have been released previously, … Continue reading →
Rating: 6.5/10 Release: 11 January 2020 Label: Independent I would hate to make a trend out of heaping criticism on the albums I review, however sometimes one just has to be blunt. While many debut albums can be improved in some regard, Tempest of Time is a case study in … Continue reading →