Formed in 2021, Burner are coming from South London and this is their sophomore opus, coming three years after the debut album. This one contains eleven songs of mayhem, all out war attack on your ears and other senses and making you move across the room while listening to this one. Burner play brutal metallic hardcore with lots of breakdowns, moshing parts, some fast parts and sometimes death metal influenced song structures. But, there are some subtle hooks and melodies here and there thrown in for good measure. On the album there are some prominent guests being Josh Middleton of Sylosis and Matt Heafy of Trivium, also Anthony Lucero from Cult Leader. Vocals are mixture of almost death metal growling and screaming with some hardcore shouting too, courtesy of singer Harry Nott. Some of the lyrics are personal, but they also deal with ecology, war and similar merry themes. The whole vibe of the album is very energetic but also somewhat apocalyptic and bleak vision of the human current state and future if we continue in the same way. My personal favorites on this one are: Sunset Parabellum, apocalyptic longer opener The Third Revelation and My Hands Become Weapons. This is a great album, so go check this one out!
South America has such vast and great underground scene unexplored enough by us Europeans and I love some of the great bands I discovered digging through underground and finding something I enjoy and like. Plaguestorm are hailing from Argentina and were formed in 2014. This is basically two guys band with Sebastian Pastor handling bass, guitar and drumm programming, and Alex Richichi handling vocal duties. What do we have here? This is band’s third full length opus and it contains eleven songs of pure energy. It has been out for couple of months but there is always time for mentioning good music, eh? The music of Plaguestorm somehow divides them from rest of melodic death metal scene because of their songwriting and diversity in song structures. The guitar work is epic, full of nice melodies and atmosphere, somehow bleak, yet it drives you to go on and find strength in yourself for continuing and fighting on. Lyrics are in English and deal with some personal stuff, also through the lines there are couple of issues that need to be addressed in today’s world. Here I must totally deliver a massive praise to the vocal lines. They are so diverse, from standard death metal aggressive growling to beautiful exquisit clean melodic vocal lines and also some black metallish screams here and there, and these vocals in combination with music left me jaw dropped and made me love this record so much and pressing me on to learn more about this band and listen to earlier opus. Personal favorites on this one are: The Void, How Could She Know? and Empty Eyes. I really, really enjoyed this one and I recommend it.
This is out for couple of months now, but it doesn’t matter, it deserves to grace the pages of this zine. Olympus are hailing from Esssex, UK and as far as I know, this is their first e.p. containing four songs. Olympus play melodic death metal with quite an energy and superb melodic parts in the overall more aggressive song structures. The record starts slowly and atmospherically, but quickly evolves into beautiful melodies, aggressive growling vocals and lyrics that evolve around theme of cosmic horror, at least I understood them that way, kinda Lovecraftian vibe comes to mind while listening to this one. Instrumental intro titled as the e.p. is shorter one bordering a little over three minutes, but other three songs are longer, more epic and I enjoyed Emperor and Out Of Reach, also Revenant quite a lot. If you are into quality melodic death metal with epic song structures this one is really a gem for you. I can’t wait for the full length album. This is a strong debut release.
