(Foreword : We just received a reply from the band about the review of their album, notifying us of a couple of factual errors made in it. Rather than re-writing the whole article, I decided to ad a couple of post-scriptums, notifying where they apply within the article. I leave it up to you to read the article correctly)
The history of Emerald starts somewhere in the year 1995 when two local bands Dark Crystal and Oppress broke up.
Taking their name from a specific area, also known as The Valley Of Armageddon, in the Palestine Region of Israel, Brazilian Death-Thrash trio Esdrelon (current line-up consisting of bassist/ singer Darcio Aguilar, guitarist/ singer Cleber Beraldo, and drummer Jack Ferrante) formed at the start of 2002 in the industrial area of ABC (hum...I'm not sure what that means).
Album number four by German forest-friends Finsterforst. Seven titles, lasting for more than seventy five minutes!
What started out as some kind of joke, has now just delivered their fifth album. The main protagonists in this band are of course Rich Ward (Stuck Mojo) and Chris Jericho, a wrestler on World Wrestle Entertainment.
When I listened to this album the first time, my first though was, “You have got to be kiddin'? How can a band hope to make it in today's music business with such a singer?”...well, time to check the info, which (literally) reads as follows :
I should be ashamed. Kong is a band that already exists for over 25 years, but that I’d never heard of before.
Of course this might have to do with the fact that what Kong brings us, is not your typical metal or hard rock. To start with all their songs are purely instrumental. So no vocals. As if that alone wasn’t enough, what they bring us is not typical metal either. I would even be tempted to call this industrial metal, or techno-metal, whatever.
Originally formed in the Crete town of China (situated on the West side of the northern Coast of the Island) during 2007, Playgrounded only stabilized its line-up around lead singer Stavros Markonis, guitarist Michael Kotsirakis, keyboardist/ electronics man Orestis Zafeiriou, bassist Odisseas Zafeiriou and drummer Vasilis Podaras in 2010.
I hadn’t realized Royal Hunt already exist 20 years. Time flies by. To celebrate their 20 years of existence, Royal Hunt have released a Special edition set, which contains no less than 3 CD’s, and one DVD. On it is an anthology of songs coming from their 11 albums, but also one brand new song, and three acoustic songs. The DVD features all promotional clips shot by the band over these 20 years.
Yet another female fronted metal band I thought. But boy did I make a mistake.
I’d never heard of this US band before, yet this is already their third album, and the second with Sabrina Valentine on vocals. And contrary to many other female fronted bands this lady doesn’t try to mimic an opera singer, but instead sings more in the lower and mid range of the spectrum; yet at the same time being able to reach rather high notes as well.
