One thing's certain, marketing activities for Beyond The Black are extremely professional. The band of Jennifer Haben could celebrate some success and chart entries with each of their longplayers. Catchy songs and a professional promotion have been the key to success with 'Heart of the Hurricane' scoring a top 10 position. It's the latest longplayer... Continue Reading →
CD review PRISTINE ‘Road Back to Ruin’
(8/10) When the sun wins battling the winterly darkness in the North of Norway some first sun rays make some new diamonds shine. One of these shiny news is Pristine's newest album 'Road Back to Ruin'. Pristine is the brainchild of Heidi Solheim, a singer hailing from the far North. Tromsø is her home and... Continue Reading →
CD review LONELY ROBOT ‘Under Stars’
(8/10) ‘Under Stars’ is the final chapter of a trilogy that began in 2015 with an album entitled ‘Please Come Home’. The following chapter ‘The Big Dream’ continued the concept in 2017 and another two years later it’s this release that marks the closing chapter. The creative mind behind this trilogy of Lonely Robot is... Continue Reading →
CD review EXUMER ‘Hostile Defiance’
(8/10) Since a few years German thrash veterans Exumer are back with excellent thrash metal. After returning in 2012 band released with ‘The Raging Tides’ an excellent album, followed by very energetic live shows. Three years later Mem von Stein and bandmates are back with a new offer. It’s entitled ‘Hostile Defiance’ and comes with... Continue Reading →
CD review ICED EARTH ‘Enter the Realm’ (EP) – Re-issue
(*/10) This release brings back some nice memories. It was in 1989 when metal powerhouse Iced Earth released a first demo entitles 'Enter the Realm'. It was the only demo of Iced Earth and the moment I started to listen to the tape I was excited about what got out of the speakers. Basically it's... Continue Reading →
CD review TRONOS ‘Celestial Mechanics’
(8/10) Is Tronos another supergroup? No idea, since I don't like this inflationary used term. What I do know is that Napalm Death's Shane Embury and producer Russ Russell teamed-up and started Tronos. Drums are handled by no less than Dirk Verbeuren and if you read these names you don't need to look into the... Continue Reading →
CD review PARAGON ‘Controlled Demolition’
(8/10) Hamburg - Rock City? This can be clearly answered with 'Yes'. Not only that band like Helloween and Gamma Ray and many more have their homebase in the Hansestadt, also German metal veterans Paragon call Hamburg their home. The quintet never made it to the top, but the fact that they add with 'Controlled... Continue Reading →
CD review BORN FROM PAIN ‘True Love’
(9/10) This review might be a bit late since the album is already out for almost a couple of month, but it's that good that it's very much worth a review. I'm talking about 'True Love', newest longplayer of Dutch powerhouse Born From Pain. It' an album that wows for sure. Twenty years after having... Continue Reading →
CD review ARRIVAL OF AUTUMN ‘Harbringer’
(8/10) Arrival Of Autumn, that's metal from Canada. This time it's neither the East Coast nor the West Coast that is home to a band. Arrival Of Autumn is hailing from Alberta. The five-piece powerhouse premiered in 2014 with 'Shadows', which was a self-released album that comprises of ten songs. After such a solid start... Continue Reading →
CD review ELUVEITIE ‘Ategnatos’
(8/10) April 2019 starts very well for fans of Swiss-based Folk Metal band Eluveitie. The eight-piece band from the Alpes returns with a new studio album entitled 'Ategnatos', their first one since 2014 when 'Origins' saw the light of day. Eluveitie belongs to the group of forerunners of folk metal and started their career in... Continue Reading →
CD review SMOULDER ‘Times of Obscene Evil and Wild Daring’
(9/10) There are many reason why Toronto is a great city. There are very friendly and open-minded people, there’s a good vibe in the city, they have with the Toronto Blue Jays a cool, and hopefully soon also successful baseball team, and so on. Furthermore it’s the home base of metal bands like the legendary... Continue Reading →
Live report CELLAR DARLING, De Helling, Utrecht – 02.04.2019
A few weeks ago Cellar Darling released their sophomore longplayer ‘The Spell’ and embarked on a tour to promote the new longplayer. One of the stops of this road trio is De Helling in Utrecht. It was the last one of this tour, that mainly focused on the UK ‘The Spell’ is an impressive album,... Continue Reading →
CD review METALL ‘Metal Fire’
(7/10) Metall is a band not that many of you have on the radar although the quintet has a starting date that was in 1982. The first three years were mainly used to stabilize their line-up before the guys started to record first songs. Metall, and the two ‘l’s aren’t a typo, didn’t have the... Continue Reading →
CD review BURNING RAIN ‘Face the Music’
(9/10) If an album/band includes Doug Aldrich on guitar the result can‘t be anything else than a blistering rock record with excellent guitar play as a fundamental ingredient. Regardless if it is Aldrich’s contribution to The Dead Daisies or Revolution Saints, all good bands with great songs in their musical repertoire. Another outfit, with Aldrich... Continue Reading →









