Coming forth from Germany, is Majesty. A band formed by vocalist Tarek “MS” Maghary. Quickly after the release of their debut album, ‘Keep It True’ (2000), the band started to build up a its reputation and soon after became more and more popular (but mostly underground). Their popularity kept growing and they toured with bands like U.D.O. and Mystic Prophecy.
Having reviewed their latest studio album ‘Razorback Killers’, and rewarding that album with a good score, I was curious how this live album would sound like.
My first remark is that new singer Brian Allen acquits himself very well of the job but is sometimes struggling with the really high notes in the older songs from the Carl Albert era. I have no comments to make about the other musicians, it sounds very good.
I had heard that a Magnum release was imminent, but hadn’t paid any further notice to it. Wait and see was my motto. I finally got a copy of the ‘new’ album about just a week before I was heading towards their gig in the Biebob. But I was rather disappointed, since the album only contains 2 brand new tracks, and the other 10 tracks are old songs, all but two of whom have been partially been re-recorded.
Almost a decade before one Steve Harris would start up what was to become one of the more successful Heavy Metal bands still around (somewhere in 1966 to be more precise, bassist Barry Skeels, singer Steve Drewett and guitarist Chris Rose (whom had that far been active in an acoustic band) witnessed a performance of Cream at their school hall in Basildon (Southern border of Sussex, some 50 km East from the center of London)!
Although this is an 100 % German band, their sound contains some vry heavy Southern Roc influences. Yet they do not sound convincing enough, by which I mean something is lacking in their music to sound really ‘Southern’. As a matter of fact I also hear some groove in their music.
The vocals aren’t too bad though, since Sven Zaklikowski is a rather good copy of Zakk Wylde, but alas with a German accent, like so many of his countrymen – vocalists have. The other musicians in this band also acquit themselves very well of the job.
After five years of existence, German quartet Farewell To Arms finally debut with Perceptions (the first full length; there were a demo-MCD and an EP in 2010), which lasts for forty one minutes. The album (cf. the intro) starts rather melodic, modern and progressive, yet musically this act isn’t but modern and melodic Thrash-edged Metalcore / Thrash / Death Metal with a sound that is very closely related to the ‘trusted’ scenes of both Sweden and the U.S.Aha. Trusted, meaning overloaded, lacking of an own identity, pubic and infantile it is.
