6th Awakening – “Psycho Path” (2012)

Label : Grom Records/Tmina Records

Review by Davide Torresan

6th Awakening is a curious case of a band. This Swedish group was created in 2001 by the singer Lovisa Lundmark and the guitarist Mathias Hamerud. Over the years, they changed the line-up many times and because of this, they released only 3 demos. Until now, since the line up has settled and therefore has been able to condense the ideas of the members into the debut album. The genre that they propose is melodic death metal with different contrasts and shades, thanks to the sound and Lovisa‘s voice. The main feature of this singer is that she can do both clean vocals and growl. She’s able to switch between the two styles with extreme ease. Just to give you an example, when she does the clean vocals she remembers me of Anna Murphy, the singer of the folk/death metal band Eluveitie. They have a similar vocal register. Now let’s talk of the music. Continue reading »

Italian Symphonic Metal band PURSING THE END confirmed for Rommelrock 2013

Italian symphonic metal band PURSUING THE END has been confirmed for ROMMELROCK 2013. The festival will take place in Maasmechelen (Belgium) on August 16-17 and they will have the pleasure to share the stage with THERION (special 25th anniversary tour), TOKYO BLADE and many others cool bands!  Continue reading »

Voiceless Void – “Song of Black Roses”(2010)

Label: Mazzar Records

Review by Luisa Mercier

Voiceless Void come from Russia and “Song of Black Roses” is their fourth full-length. They offer to the audience a gothic-doom metal played in a rather classic way. Plenty of growling vocals, female vocals, guitars tuned down and lots of keyboards and synth. The opener “Be My Faith” is completely sung by male vocalist and I have to say that I don’t like them at all. Way too raw for my ears and they lack violence and despair. The title track follows and we get to hear Olga, the female vocalist. She’s got a pleasant dark half-operatic voice that is well suited to contrast Roman, the guitar player and growler. Something different is “Queen of The Lakes” which has an acoustic intro and some nice melodic parts mostly supported by synth and guitars. Listening through the album I have to make a great effort to find something really original, honestly the album is well produced, nicely played but something is missing. That idea that makes you say: “this is actually very good!”. It stays an average gothic metal album that lovers of this genre may enjoy but not the others. Continue reading »

Aut Mori – “Первая Слёза Осени” (“Pervaya Slyoza Oseni” – “The First Tears of Autumn”) (2012)

Label : BadMoonMan Music

Review by Vard Aman

Aut Mori are from the city of Yaroslavl, about 250km North East of Moscow, and were formed in 2009 by three ex-members of Doom Metal band Auto-de-Fe (other ex-Auto-de-Fe members spawned the band Sea of Despair). Aut Mori play a style of atmospheric Gothic Doom Metal, similar in a lot of ways to Auto-de-Fe, but with a very strong Draconian influence. Actually, to best describe Aut Mori’s sound on “Первая Слёза Осени” think of a Russian version of a more atmospheric and symphonic Draconian but with less oomph (something along the lines of “She Dies”). It sounds like a promising prospect, doesn’t it? Well, it is! Also, while I have your attention regarding Draconian, I should just mention that the guest drummer on “Первая Слёза Осени” is none other than Draconian‘s Jerry Torstensson, who was also responsible for the mastering of the album; and the guest violinist, Olof Göthlin, was also responsible for the violins on “A Rose for the Apocalypse”.

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Amily – “To All in Graves” (2012)

Label : Solitude Productions

Review by Vard Aman

When I first came across Amily (from Rivne, Ukraine), they were marketing themselves as Funeral Doom – slower and bleaker than traditional Death Doom / Gothic Doom, (but not quite as slow as Drone Doom – a kind of Doom Metal where the drummer has time to leave the stage, go to the bathroom, buy a beer at the bar, drink it, chat to a few friends, update his Facebook status, return to the stage and still be 10 minutes early for the next drum beat…. so he goes off again to buy another drink, has a few shooters while he’s at the bar, gets drunk, forgets the time and ends up missing the next drum beat altogether totally messing up the timing of the song and throwing the rest of the band completely out on sync… pffffft… drummers! Well, OK, perhaps a bit of an exaggeration there…) Anyway, the first two songs I heard from Amily were the demo versions of the title track to their then upcoming album, the bleak and heavy “To All in Graves”, and the immense and beautifully crafted “Fading Image of My Own”: both songs that made Amily a name to keep a very close eye on in the future. So the release of their album when it came was cause for some excitement.

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