Tag Archives: hard rock

(review) Invicti – ‘Songs of Conquest’

Invicti are band coming from Seville, Spain and they are new to the scene being formed in 2022. This is their debut full length opus. This one contains eight songs plus one bonus song, meaning nine in all. The music of Invicti can be described as a melodic heavy metal leaning also on some hard rock influences in songwriting and structures, also some groove metal and progressive played parts. Musically, that is pure heavy metal, with good vocals at times reminding me of mixture between Bruce Dickinson and Eric Adams. ‘Riders of Death’ reminded me a lot of Dickinson’s solo material in many parts, having that melody and groove. Lyrically, songs with titles like ‘Rock, Drink and Fuck’ or ‘Balls of Steel’, also ‘Heavy Metal is Painful’ will give you the picture what this band is about in lyrics side of things. Musically they are tight, superb guitar solos, especially in above mentioned ‘Rock…’, and the whole atmosphere and vibe of the album reminded me a lot of early Manowar albums and that era of first three albums, but maybe a bit less epic, but also having some longer songs and more fantasy leaned like ‘The Arena’ or ‘Song of Conquest’. This is great debut for a heavy metal band.

7,5/10

(review) Jerry Only – Anti-Hero

I was wondering what was Jerry Only up to since Misfits now play reunited with Danzig under the moniker Original Misfits, so I guess Danzig made ultimatum to Jerry not to continue that ghastly version of family band under the name of legendary horror punk icons and one of my favorite bands of all time.

Well, here is my answer. Jerry Only released solo album and the music continues in similar path of last Misfits studio effort Devil’s Rain and couple of singles afterwards. That means a mixture of horror punk roots, melodic hard rock and even stadium metal. There are only eight songs on this one. So let us present this one:

Fear The Walking Dead – generic hard rock/horror punk song, boring and unimaginative with stupid synth intro. Not great beginning.

Snake Eyes – more up tempo metal punk rock song with good chorus and it is a decent effort, I liked this one.

Anti-Heroes – great melody and anthemic begin, but the song is just plain boring with piano parts where there should be no such thing, kinda reminding of seventies glam rock in some parts.

Taboo – just horrible, this is probably the worst song on this record, just horrible generic rock n roll with horror lyrics, a plain disaster.

(You’re So Square) Baby I Don’t Care – the title reminds of some Motorhead song, but in fact this is a decent doo wop influenced punk rock song reminding of old Misfits spirit in a way, I liked this one.

One Cell From You – again, so boring and uneventful song, no verse, just lame chorus and plain emptiness.

Dead Men – has all those old school Misfits shouts when the song starts, even decent melody on the verse but the chorus spoils it all, ruins the song absolutely.

Illuminati – well our old Jerry Only is having his revenge upon Illuminati and their conspiracies, this is in fact a decent song again on melody and verse, but chorus is also massive and strong made for singing along and this is for me best out of three decent songs on this record.

So, three decent, five just bad. Avoid.

(review) Cockney Rejects – Power Grab

Sons of East London, legendary Cockney Rejects are back with new full length album. I must admit that I have never been a big fan of this band, but I did not pay attention to their albums, apart of few anthems that everybody knew from Oi compilations. Well, the new album is here. There are fourteen songs on this one, celebrating 40 years of being undefeated and other merry street punk themes like being stabbed in the back, not having your heart in the scene, fighting if attacked, celebrating life and living every day like there is no tomorrow…Lyrics are great because I always love such themes in punk and hardcore bands. But, music is another thing. There are couple of songs that stand out as highlights, like Paper Tiger, Stab In The Back or my personal favorite being My Heart Ain´t In It. But, other is just too hard rock, with couple of nwobhm influenced guitar songwriting. Melodies are okay in some choruses but I never quite liked hard rock influenced punk, so this one could have been much better than it really is. At the end of the album there is a cover of Tom Petty´s Learning To Fly sounding practically same as original. There are more songs that somehow passed under my radar as fillers than anthems. Okay album but nothing special.