Band : Unherz
Album title : Unherzlich wilkommen
Label : Massacre Records
Distributor : Suburban
Release date : 27/08/2010
Release : CD

Off goes our editor-in-chief on a 10-day holiday to Tunisia (and well-deserved too), but not without asking his co-workers to start reviewing Massacre releases first, as their PR office is making waves at us getting behind somewhat! Luckily, there's only one on my to-do list, but my sarcastic “thanks” go out to those forcing me to throw around my schedule, while in fact there were 5 other bands I'd already focused attention on! Having spent an hour (in vain) trying to find enough info on this band to make for a good page's reading, here's what I can actually tell you.

The young Kaiserslautern based German (a medium-sized town in the South-Western part of the country, roughly in the middle between Saarbrücken and Mannheim) Hard Rock/ Heavy Metal band was founded in early 2008 by guitarist Andy Arnold, bassist Locke Heylmann and drummer Christian “Bogi” Bogert, who saw the completion of their line-up when singer/ 2nd guitarist Felix Orschel joined 'em a couple of months later. There was apparently an early demo, which made good to positive reviews and sold all of its 500 copies effortlessly. Somehow or other (maybe the fact that their home bases are only 45 kms apart has something to do with it), the guys managed to become support act in established Gothic Metal act Crematory's Pray Over Germany Tour 2009, this evidently leading to an explosive expansion of the band's former area of influence. The feat did not get unnoticed, and at the end of last year the guys struck a deal with the German Massive Management agency, a powerful ally indeed! As far as I an gather, the band already did some recordings in the Fall of last year, then decided to go back to the studio in early January 2010 to record their participation in the cheering of the national soccer team at the World Soccer Cup events with the song “Zwanzigzehn”, which was put on the band's website as a free download later the same month (after research - because I couldn't care less about tv sports, feeling one should do sports one self in stead of watching it on the telly with a full compliment of beers and food on the side – I found out the German team made 3rd place). In early June the band announced their signing to Massacre, feeling confident the album  (produced by Gerhard Magin, whom before worked with the likes of Crematory, would be released a mere couple of weeks later! Well, a week became a couple of months, of course.

Musically, the guys play a rather simple riff-oriented (but not without the necessary lead guitar passages as well) Hard Rock with additional Heavy touches (the kind which back in the '80s we would've dubbed “Heavy Rock”, but in this case there's the advantage of improved recording techniques and sounds), but as proven with “Die Zeit heilt alle Wunden”, the guys are not afraid to show a more intimate side of themselves with an almost acoustic ballad (only in the last 40 seconds do the guitars get a more distorted amplification). On top of that come Arnold's semi-shouted, occasionally normal, raw vocals. Lyrically, and with an attitude of “we live our lives and do things our way” (something which struck a chord with the band's audiences, and which they sing about in album closing song “Unherz”), the guys draw lyrical influence from things happening around them...child abuse in the song “Die Bestie”, a college kid killing his fellow-students in “Amok”, a encouragement song for the German soccer team in “Zwanzigzehn”, etc...thus giving their German fans further recognition points. Oh yeah, you've understood it well: these guys sing in their native language. Luckily not a local dialect, but rather a nice clear German.

According to the label's promo sheet, this band should fall nicely in line with people into Böhse Onkelz, Frei.Wild, and even Die Toten Hozen. People into those acts should perhaps check out the songs posted at myspace.com/unherz. Regretfully there's only the full-length of the aforementioned football song, the other 9 tracks being represented by samples. No idea what the guys are up to next...and there's only a couple of (German) gigs mentioned in the 4 months to come!

78/100

Tony.