Despite a huge variety within the first and last efforts, I have always appreciated The Wounded Kings’ Doom a lot. Both first albums (Embrace Of The Narrow House and The Shadows Over Atlantis), as well as In The Chapel Of The Black Hand, do belong to my favourite Doom albums in the year they had respectively been released (i.e. 2008, 2010 and 2011). When it comes to the latter, it was the first one with a new vocalist, a female one this time.
Dutch horde Sammath was formed about two decades ago by Jan Kruitwagen. After a couple of demonstrational cassettes, Sammath joined forces with Folter Records, which did release four full lengths. I do appreciate every single one of them for its primitivism and nihilism, the underground attitude and the anti-trendy approach.
Kamchatka is from Sweden and their bluesy stoner on The Search Goes On seems like it would transfer very well to a live performance.
Although Kamchatka doesn't add an entirely new flavor to a familiar genre, they do a more than fine job of it. The song writing is sharp and snappy and the performance is spot on. My only complaint about this CD, their fifth already, is that the vocals are pretty one-dimensional and change very little from track to track. Then again, that's a standard trait of the stoner genre.
The straight in yr face- thrash metal meets hardcore songwriting is very aggressive and the Montreal band focuses entirely on just making hopeless youth music.
Something of a surprise from the Czech scene, Cult of Fire mix some notable ferociousness of their own into the typical black metal formula.
When talking / thinking about the Extreme Metal scene, we’re used to focus on the scenes from Europe, America (both North and South), and ‘modern’ parts of the Pacific (New Zealand, Australia, Japan and Singapore more specifically). However, more than once I got in touch with a release from a band that comes from a mostly ‘unusual’ country. I can enlist an impressive amount of bands, but I will not.
Blaze, not be confused with the once Wolfsbane, Iron Maiden, and Blaze main man Blaze Bayley, no sir no, these 4 youngsters hail from Japan, and with the EP the rock dinosaur they provide us a really good slab of very old school hard rock/ Metal, in this case not so much influenced by the known NWOBHM stars of the early 80 ear like Maiden, Saxon or Priest, but rather influenced by UFO, old scorpions and MSG.
Adramelech are (were) a far-underestimated band from Finland, with members also known from their co-operation with, for example, Demigod, Torture Killer and Impious Havoc, a. o. The album Psychostasia was some kind of ‘break-though’ within the (European / international) Death Metal scene, if only it were because of the eccentric, characterising approach courtesy of bands from the Land of a Thousand Lakes. It originally saw the light in 1996 via major Extreme Metal label Relapse Records.
X&Y is an alternative rock band that was formed at the end of 2006 in the French Riviera. The band has participated in and won various contests, and reached the finals of national contests from amongst hundreds of bands from France, Belgium and Switzerland. They were also nominated for the Hollywood Music in Media Awards in November 2011 with the song “I miss you”.
Hailing from the West Midlands British town of Kidderminster (which is situated some 26 km from Birmingham in SW direction), this band was formed in early 2008 by (lead) guitarist/ singer Hannah Fieldhouse (formerly of Oxzide and Stream Of Sound, and also running an own acoustic project on vocals & guitar under her own name), and guitarist Wayne Taylor (whom was singer and founding member of local Metal outfit Forge Chaos, at at the time of Winter Storm's formation looking for a chance
