I am always glad to discover new bands in this vast and beautiful underground scene that I have been a part of for almost three decades now. Next Door To Heaven are hailing from Russia and this is their new e.p. The theme of the e.p. is battle between two sides of one medal, between artificial and natural within one person. There are five songs on this little record. Music of Next Door To Heaven can be described as mixture of metalcore, modern metal and being melodic above all. Catchy and nice guitar hooks are successfully mixing aggression of metalcore with calm of atmospheric metal creating one really fine soundscape for the listener. Vocals are superb with singer Daria Mazunova being able to reach emotion, melancholy and happiness varying of the song. Her voice reminds me a lot of Anneke from The Gathering. My personal favorite is Unleash The Beast being on of the hardest yet melodic song on this e.p. There is an interesting guest performance by none other than Lord Nelson (ex Stuck Mojo) on Flare Up being more of a rapcore song proving variety and creativity of this band. Really enjoyed this one.
Dyecrest returned after hiatus in 2013.and I am glad we have them back on the scene, because this new studio album is out now on Inverse Records and I listened to it and reviewed it for this webzine.
The Finns had their ups and downs since their start in 2001. After Sanctuary dropped them from the label and a lot of blood, sweat, tears and hard work the guys recorded this album but then they parted ways with their original vocalist. Bjorn Speed Strid known from his work in Soilwork helped and recorded vocals as a guest to help Dyecrest on this album. Luckily, the guys found permanent new vocalist Mikael who fits in the band perfectly, so they finally rerecorded and remastered some songs and the album came out. It contains 13 songs of excellent melodic modern metal with some thrash and melodic death metal influences. The vocals on the album are very melodic, almost power/heavy metal and I loved the vocal melody lines. The song structures have so many melodic guitar hooks and anthemic choruses just made for singalong and I caught myself humming to many tunes from this album long after I finished listening. For me the absolute highlights of this album are “No Fear”, “First Born Angel” and magical “Nuku Vaan” sung in Finnish with guest vocals by Elisa De Boer. Legendary Piet Sielck also contributed on this album as guest vocals. If you are a fan of melodic and modern metal, this album is just made for you!
Wrath Sins are hailing from Portugal, Vila Nova de Gaia. The band was formed in 2012. and this is their second full length studio album.
The album contains instrumental intro plus nine tracks. After the opening intro track, the album opener “Unquiet Heart” practically blew me away. This track has it all, thrash metal aggression, melodies to mosh to, great shouted and clean sung vocals and I immediately knew that this album will be something awesome. Apart from all the thrash metal this band also cleverly uses some superb progressive metal parts with some fresh ideas thrown in making their metal modern but also with a nod to the old masters. “Collision” is an anthem that even Phil Anselmo would not be ashamed of. The highlights of the album are for sure “Fear of the Unseen”, “The Sun Wields Mercy” and already above mentioned “Unquiet Heart”. If you are a fan of modern thrash metal with a progressive touch and moshy parts, get this one.
KRAYKULLA-WEBZINE 