Moray Eel - Psycho:Delusion

This is Moray Eel, a band from the very strange Russian exclave, the Kaliningrad Oblast.
While this band is often described in the internet as a death/thrash metal band, I find very little Death or Thrash here. This leans towards the so-called "mallcore" a bit more, instead. If you're trve kvlt, that's enough to put you off, I guess; but if you enjoy good riffs regardless of the possible connotations of a label, then this might be a bit interesting for you.
Indeed, while I wouldn't go as far as saying this is a great album or a great band, they do have some delightful, groovy, headbangable riffs every now and then.
Some people have compared this band to Arch Enemy... mostly for the vocals, I'd imagine. I don't believe that's an excellent comparison, but it's also not completely inaccurate. Take from that what you will.


Moray Eel - Psycho:Delusion

Tracklist:

1. Intro
2. So Good To Die
3. The Cross And The Raven
4. Wet Dream
5. Secret Desire (Fucking Christ)
6. Material
7. Broken
8. Boo!
9. Oncoming War
10. Desert King
11. Hate Me
12. Pervert
13. Accuser
14. Forbidden Waters

Salem - Necessary Evil

Today I bring you one of Salem's newer albums, the one they made the switch from their mid-period style to the new one.

This sounds more like modern death metal. This version of Salem seems to have lost those charming Doomi-ish undertones... which is not to say this is bad; just different. But indeed, many people don't like different.
I guess it's not their best album, but it's not half bad in my opinion.

Regardless, I'd recommend this to anyone that likes Salem, modern death metal or the so-called oriental metal movement.


Salem - Necessary Evil

Tracklist:

1. Blood
2. Amona
3. Idle Worship
4. Mindless
5. Hypatia
6. Strife
7. Resentment
8. Making A Difference
9. More Blood
10. Once Upon A Lifetime (Part 1)
11. Once Upon A Lifetime (Part 2)
12. Once Upon A Lifetime (Part 3)
13. Once Upon A Lifetime (Part 4)
14. Once Upon A Lifetime (Part 5)

Cor Scorpii - Attergangar

This is the first release by Cor Scorpii, an awesome little EP. Came out in 2005.
Only four songs (totaling 23 minutes), but it's quite good. Be sure not to miss the opening track, which is, in my opinion, the best here.

This is obviously for fans of Windir and the two bands that spawned with its demise (Vreid & Cor Scorpii), but it's also for fans of fast-paced melodic black metal and good melodies and riffs.

Cor Scorpii - Attergangar

Tracklist:

1. Fall of Man
2. Transcendental Journey
3. Attergangar
4. Når Enden Er God

WarCry - Alea Jacta Est

Named for Julius Caesar's famous words spoken when he decided to cross the Rubicon River and start his civil war against Pompey, these words mean "the die has been cast"; this is WarCry's third album, and their most progressive to date.

Notably, the opening track features a track-ending 17-second scream. I think the longest I can scream for is 13 seconds, and certainly not at that pitch!

This is a very solid album, and fans of prog will certainly enjoy it, but it's not really WarCry's best, even if it does have a couple of classics.

WarCry - Alea Jacta Est

Tracklist:

1. El Guardián de Troya [The Guardian of Troy]
2. Iberia
3. Despertar [To Awaken]
4. Lamento [Lament]
5. Sin Tu Voz [Without Your Voice]
6. Aire [Air]
7. Junto A Mí [Next To Me]
8. Espíritu de Amor [Spirit of Love]
9. Fé [Faith]
10. Reflejos de Sangre [Reflexions of Blood]

WarCry - El Sello de los Tiempos

This is the second album WarCry released, notably, the same year as their first album.
I like it better than the first album. They sound like a band here, with more diverse compositions.


WarCry - El Sello de los Tiempos

Tracklist:

1. El Sello de los Tiempos [The Seal of Times]
2. Alejandro [Alexander]
3. Hijo de la Ira [Son of the Wrath]
4. Capitán Lawrence [Captain Lawrence]
5. Tú Mismo [Yourself]
6. Un Mar de Estrellas [A Sea of Stars]
7. Un Lugar [A Place]
8. Dispuesto A Combatir [Willing To Fight]
9. Vampiro [Vampire]
10. Hacia Delante [Forwards]
11. Renacer [Rebirth]

WarCry - WarCry

This band, named WarCry, played an amazing concert in my city last Sunday. To celebrate the occasion, I have decided to share with you, my good readers, the awesome music these guys have made.
WarCry is a progressive power metal band from Asturias, Spain, formed in 1992, but wasn't really a serious project at the time. Split up, reunited in 1996 to record a demo (titled Demon '97) and split up again in '98 to reunite yet once again in 2001, WarCry is the creation of vocalist Víctor García (the Spanish surname by choice, you should know!), and by 2001 he would show the logo and ideas he had for WarCry with drummer Alberto Ardines, both former members of Spanish power metal band Avalanch.
The 2001 version of the band was merely a side-project for García to write stuff he didn't feel would fit in with the creative aspirations of Avalanch. But soon after, he would be expelled from Avalanch after his bandmates learned of García plans to record a WarCry album. This album, no less.
Despite the fact that García wrote for and contributed much to Avalanch, he was only credited with two songs in that band, one of which would become one of the band's most famous and well-liked songs despite his then bandmates barely accepting the song.
After being expelled, he took the obvious step of showing the WarCry logo and demo to Ardines, who thought it was great and an "open path", making WarCry their main band; and it would go on to become more successful than Avalanch ever was.

This album was recorded, admirably, with Ardines on drums and García on vocals, guitar, bass and keyboards, employing Fernando Mon and Pablo García as session guitarists for some of the solos, and it was released in early 2002; a second album would follow in December that year, as those guitarists, keyboard player Manuel Ramil and bassist Álvaro Jardón would all officially join WarCry.

Today, WarCry has released six albums and a live album which went gold in Spain. They have toured all over the hispanic world with other famous bands like Mägo de Oz, Barón Rojo, Soziedad Alkoholika and Saratoga.
WarCry is one of those amazing bands that are moderately well-known to Spanish speakers but that sadly dwell in absolute oblivion in the anglo-parlant world.
To encourage more anglo-parlants to discover this amazing band, as well as others, I have taken the time to translate some of their lyrics (and continue to work on it on my free time) right here.

Every WarCry album is quite different, and this, being their starting point, is obviously the least evolved of their works, closer to typical power metal, yet with its own distinctive style. Heavy in double-bass drumming, keyboard melodies and lyrical themes dealing with epic events (the story in Samson in "Señor"), battle ("Nana", "Al Salir El Sol") and heavy metal brotherhood ("Pueblo Maldito", "Trono del Metal", "Hoy Gano Yo"), and such topics.
Finally, I recommend this album and band to anyone who likes power metal, and also to those who like power metal with balls and honesty, a power metal band that became famous through playing great, not through imitating others or appealing to a target market that buys cheesy keyboards and girly screams over double-bass drumming. And I especially recommend this to those who enjoy great lyrics, if you can understand them.

WarCry - WarCry

Tracklist:

1. Intro
2. Luz del Norte [Northern Light]
3. Quiero [I Want]
4. Nadie [No One]
5. Pueblo Maldito [Damned People/Town]
6. Cada Vez [Every Time]
7. Señor [Lord*]
8. Al Salir El Sol [When The Sun Rises]
9. Trono del Metal [Throne of Metal]
10. Hoy Gano Yo [I Win Today]
11. Nana [Lullaby]
12. Amanecer [Dawn]
Text between [ ] represents the translation of the titles.
* = The word "señor" can be translated as any of the following words: sir, sire, lord, mister, master.
In this particular context, the appropriate translation was applied.

Adorned Brood - Hiltia

As promised, here's Adorned Brood's amazing debut album, Hiltia.
I said I might explain this album better in the previous post about this band. I have decided against it, but I'll say this: it's quite simply full of really cool riffs, and the folk bit seems well thought out; it fits in perfectly with the harsher black metal sound. Unlike the way I perceive many of these so-called folk metal bands who really play black metal with "folk" instruments here and there, the melodies are a very nice complement to the awesome metal, and it sounds purposeful, not like the bursts of not very memorable black metal other bands seem accustomed to play.
I say the more straight-forward metal bits here are also often quite reminiscent of thrash metal

Definitely, this would interest fans of black metal, viking metal and folk metal of the harsher variety, but the awesome riffs and melodies are enough to please most metal fans.

Adorned Brood - Hiltia

Tracklist:

1. Intro
2. For Honour And Land
3. Hiltia
4. Unehrenhaftes Feindesblut
5. Furor Teutonicus
6. Donerhamer
7. Undisclosed Treasures of The Mortal
8. Adora
9. Kissing The Heathen Amulet
10. Die Rede Des Erhabenen
11. Outro

Mirrorthrone - Gangrene

Well, I thought I'd make a quick post before heading to work this morning, so here we go.
This is Mirrorthrone, an awesome solo band from France. This is symphonic black metal, but it's nothing like Dimmu Borgir or all those bands that kvlt black metal people will despise. It's more tr00 black metal, with very well-done and musical orchestral bits, as opposed to the long, few, basic and harmonically relevant chords those other bands would play on their synths simulating strings only.

Mirrorthrone - Gangrene

Tracklist:

1. Dismay
2. No One By My Side
3. The Fecal Rebellion
4. Ganglion
5. Une Existence Dont Plus Personne Ne Jouit
6. So Frail

Salem - Collective Demise

Today I thought I'd post another Salem album.
As I said before, Salem is the first Israeli extreme metal band, and pioneers of the Oriental Metal movement.
As such, they have a historic significance of sorts, especially with the rise to fame of many bands whose way was paved by this one, such as Orphaned Land and Melechesh.
But unlike many bands that are historically significant, I think this band is fucking awesome!

This is their third album, where they seem to return to their brutal roots a little.
It's considerably heavier than the previous effort, A Moment of Silence. Musically, it's faster and it has a thicker, crushing, dissonant sound.
Lyrically, it's also heavier. While the album before dealt much with grief, sorrow, regret, suffering, fear, the deaths of loved ones, and other similar topics, this one seems to lean more towards war, destruction, misanthropic hopeslessness, and specifically the second Intifada.

In conclusion, this is a great album in general, but it'll be enjoyed most by those who appreciate slow-paced death metal or the doom-death thing, and especially those who want different lyrics than the usual death metal stuff.

Salem - Collective Demise


Tracklist:

1. Broken Yet United
2. Coming End of Reason
3. Slave
4. Act of Terror
5. Act of War
6. Collective Demise
7. Dead Eyes
8. Feed On Your Grief
9. Decadence In Solitude
10. Recall
11. Al Taster
12. Inhuman Greed

Soziedad Alkoholika - Intoxikazión Etílika

Time for some hardcore. Or crossover. Anyway, this is Soziedad Alkoholika (something like Alkoholik Soziety, if you translated it into English), a pretty hardcore band from the Basque Country in Spain. These guys are so hardcore, for years they were banned from playing in many places in their native Spain under accusations that they used their profits to fund the Euskadi Ta Askatasuna, better known as the ETA, an international terrorist/separatist organization that operates chiefly in Spain and southern France with the goal of gaining independence for the Greater Basque Country.
Of course, the media can be a bit sensationalist.

The reality is this:
This band was formed in 1988, a time where many bands in the Spanish scene were shifting their punk style to metal.
This is their first demo released in 1990, containing one of their most famous and controversial songs, Nos Vimos En Berlín, that speaks out against the violence commited by Jews against others and is often taken by the media as an anti-Semite song.
Perhaps the acid lyrical content is not of much interest to most of my readers who don't understand the Spanish language, but the music might be. Like I said, this is the aggressive mix of hardcore and thrash metal that many call crossover, but unlike many bands labeled so, this isn't one leaning towards the other, or a band that plays one with the influence of another and then turns to the other. No... is is literally what happens when you combine primitive thrash metal and dissident hardcore at their best.

The only flaw this demo has is exactly that, that it's just a demo and you can't expect amazing production quality from a demo released almost 21 years ago. But many of these songs would resurface in later releases, and they would be the ones that would turn this band into the monster that it is today, widely recognized and successful in the underground of Spain and Latin America, in particular Mexico.

Soziedad Alkoholika - Intoxikazión Etílika

Tracklist:

1. S.H.A.K.T.A.L.E.
2. No Eres Mas [You Aren't More]
3. Por Favor Deja De Echarme Aceite Hirviendo En Los Ojos (Parte 1) [Please Stop Throwing Boiling Oil In My Eyes (Part 1)]
4. Intoxikazión Etílika [Ethylic Intoxication]
5. Nos Vimos En Berlín [We Saw Each Other In Berlin]
6. Lo Tienes Fácil [You Have It Easy]
7. Padre Black & Decker [Black & Decker Priest]
8. Kontra La Agresión Kastrazión [Against Aggression Castration]
9. La Última Partida [The Last Match]
10. Por Favor Deja De Echarme Aceite Hirviendo En Los Ojos (Parte 2) [Please Stop Throwing Boiling Oil In My Eyes (Part 2)]
11. Sin Dios Ni Ná [With No God Nor Nah]

Text between [ ] represents the translation of the titles.