Author Andy Barker
The Press Release states Iron Mask are a Neo-Classical Power Metal band. If said press release hadn’t claimed this, then I wouldn’t have spent the whole of the first track thinking that someone had played a cruel trick and substituted… Continue Reading →
Symphonic Black Metal… And there you go, half of you reading this have just thought, “Oh, another load of Cradle Of Filth/Dimmu Borgir wannabes”. Fair point. It feels like in the last 10 years the term has been synonymous with… Continue Reading →
On the surface, Italy’s Tragodia seemed easy enough to pigeon-hole. Power Metal in attitude with Progressive elements. Prog/Power. And yes, the opening track fits nicely into the niche. But as the album continues it becomes evident that they aren’t really… Continue Reading →
Dark Melancholic Metal from Germany – and the band’s debut no less! It wasn’t so long ago that Finland had the monopoly on Dark Metal, and sure the opening track does show that Embercrow have indeed, at some point, been… Continue Reading →
Epysode’s debut totally passed me by! I missed it somehow – How?? I do like a bit of Dark Power Metal and sure enough this second offering has it in spades. There’s no Dragons being slayed here, no wizards. no… Continue Reading →
The Vision Bleak released their fantastic debut 9 whole years ago in 2004! Well that was a shock – where does the time go? It was at the height of Gothic Metal and their dark theatrical ‘horror metal’ (as they… Continue Reading →
I really thought I had Dark Age sussed by the end of the first two tracks. Two rather decent tracks of what anyone now over the age of 25 would dub Gothic Metal (before lazy P.R. Types and journos used… Continue Reading →
I’ve only heard Matt Barlow sing outside the confines of Iced Earth on Pyramaze’s 2008 CD “Immortal”, but I was told that the music was already written for that album so it was a similar situation to Iced Earth…again. He… Continue Reading →
The 2nd installment of Wolf-obsessed Melodic Metal from the project written by, and put together by highly respected vocalists Michael Voss (Mad Max/Casanova) and Mark Sweeney (Crystal Ball). 2011’s debut was well received so they are back this year with… Continue Reading →
Just listen to Floor Jansen’s voice! Isn’t that just one of the many reasons we love Metal more than any other music? Metal musicians take things to the extreme, push the boundaries, usually ignore trends and generally like to be… Continue Reading →
Saltatio Mortis are rather well described in an excellent review of their recent live album by Gizmo elsewhere on Ave Noctum so really it would save a lot of time and effort if you could all read that review first… Continue Reading →
Equilibrium should be available on the NHS. In fact, Folk Metal in general should be prescribed as an alternative remedy to drugs like Prozac – “Yes Mrs Clarke, we’d like to try something a little different, if you could play… Continue Reading →