Band : Hunted
Album title : Welcome The Dead
Label : Massacre Records
Distributor : Suburban
Release date : 29/07/2011
Release : CD

I'll immediately put it as it is: Hunted is quite a difficult band, not in a bad way though, far from that. It's just pretty hard to put a label on the music they bring and unfortunately, labelling something will just always be what we like to do. Everything and everyone needs a label nowadays, so let's give it one. What about 'heavy metal'? I think this covers it all a bit, since on Welcome The Dead, we can clearly hear all kinds of metal genres: symphonic, progressive, thrash, power, etc. Let's therefore have a closer look at the main influences of this fine English band: take Iron Maiden and Nevermore, mix them together, add a pretty hot sauce of Dream Theater et voilà ... you have Hunted.
Let's talk about their debut album now. After a redundant introduction song, The Silence of Minds really shows what we're dealing with: a short but fantastic album full of powerful songs with an extremely high level of variation in each and every song, which keeps the album alive and, most of all, interesting from the beginning till the very end. In addition, with the Nevermore cover The Heart Collector as a wonderfully brought bonus track, you're in for a treat with Hunted. Purchase Welcome The Dead if you want to experience some of the finest heavy metal heard in a while. As a new band, these English guys will get far if they carry on like this, believe me!

86/100

Tim