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Italian band Elvenking formed in 1997. If you’re guessing from the name that they’re Power metal (a genre rich in elves, dragons and other mythical or fantasy creatures) then you’re almost right. They are a folk/power metal band. They released their first alvum (Heathenreel) in 2001, and have released albums at regular intervals since then. Era is the bands seventh album.

Elvenking have a couple of guest stars on the album – Teemu Matysaari (Wintersun) contributes a guitar solo, and the awesome Jon Oliva (Savatage, Trans Siberian Orchestra, Jon Oliva’s Pain) sings on two of the songs.

Listening to the album, it’s definitely more Power metal than Folk metal, although the folk part does show through at times.

”The Loser” has a folk feel at the beginning, but this is soon swamped by the ...

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Formed in 1994, Death metal band Vore have self financed and released four albums, the most recent being Gravehammer in 2011. The band have now signed with AFM records and are re-releasing Gravehammer as with AFM’s backing it will reach a far wider audience.
The band have a good live reputation and have performed with bands including Cannibal Corpse, In flames, Morbid angel, Deicide, Obituary, Carcass, Manowar and many more.

Musically if you’ve listened to the band before then you’ll have a pretty good idea what to expect from the new album – after 18 years then there aren’t really any surprises here. It’s their usual style of crushingly heavy death metal...

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Helstar are an American Power metal band from Houstan, Texas. They formed in 1982 (30 years ago), although given the title of the album you’d probably already guessed that. Over the years the band have split and reformed a number of times and have toured with plenty of big names including W.A.S.P., Megadeth, Keel,Savatage, Fates Warning and Yngwie Malmsteen

Given the album title, I’d initially assumed it was going to be a typical anniversary release – in other words a ”best of”. In fact it’s a Live album. The band performed a special 30th anniversary concert in their hometown, and it’s that concert that has been recorded for release at this live album.

It’s a very good album for fans of the band with the songs included covering most if not all their career, and as such it’s also a goo...

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After releasing ”Crimen Excepta” in April 2012, Polish heavy metal act Crystal Viper are re-releasing their first two albums through AFM records, complete with bonus tracks. ”The curse of Crystal viper” gets five bonus tracks while ”Metal nation” gets six bonus tracks.

In terms of vocals, Marta has a traditional heavy metal vocal style, similar to bands including Crucified Barbara, Hysterica, Bitch, Doro and others. Musically there are clear Iron Maiden influences, and German heavy metal bands including Accept sound to be influences too. In short, what you have here is traditional heavy metal with female vocals.

The music is very good with plenty of power, great guitar riffs and some excellent vocals – Crystal Viper are definitely a band I want to see play live sometime based on listeni...

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Italian Heavy metal/Thrash metal band Athemis were formed in 1999 by Andrea Martongelli. Since then they’ve released six studio albums. It’s only in the last two or three years they’ve really started to become well known in the UK, thanks to appearances at Bloodstock, Hard Rock Hell and Hammerfest and releasing their ”Pop up your ass vol 1” EP which featured six cover versions – of songs by Rihanna, Madonna, Lady Gaga, Micheal Jackson, Destiny’s Child, and Britney Spears, which was very funny and was made available for free download.

Now signed to Off yer Rocka recordings, they’re back with their latest album (their seventh) – We fight.

Brief comments on a few tracks..

The album starts with a good instrumental track – ”Apocalyptic nightmare” It hints at what is to come with the guitar w...

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Armonight are an Italian band who play gothic metal with female vocals. As with many bands, that’s a massive simplification – in reality the music has many different influences and doesnt sit neatly in one genre, so although Gothic metal is the best fit, they also have touches of Rock, melodic rock, symphonic metal and more.

I first heard Armonight at the Ravenheart music festival in Birmingham, and was very impressed by how good they were live, so I was very pleased to be asked to review their new album – Tales from the heart. Having listened to it over the last couple of weeks I have to say I’m impressed...

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Bullet are a heavy metal band from Växjö in Sweden. They released their debut album ”Heading for the top” in 2006, and followed this with ”Bite the Bullet” (2008) and ”Highway pirates” (2011). Now they are back with their fourth album, ”Full pull”.
The band have played plenty of their own shows and also done shows with Sabaton and Hammerfall, and had the pleasure of being the opening band when AC/DC played Gothenburg to a crowd of 50,000 fans.

Listening to the album, it’s clear that AC/DC are a big influence on them musically, but vocally Hell Hofer’s voice reminds me more of Britny Fox...

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Forty years ago, Neil Diamond played 10 sold out nights at the Greek theatre in Los Angeles, an open air amphitheatre holding around 5700 people – thats a lot of people over a ten night run. The album ”Hot August night” was recorded at one of those shows, and on release it became a massive success around the world, spending 39 weeks at the top of the charts in Australia, and spending 20 weeks in the UK album charts. It became one of his biggest selling albums ever, going multi-platinum in the US at a time when that required seriously high sales.

Now Universal are re-releasing the album in a deluxe edition. As you’d expect from the other releases that have had the deluxe edition treatment recently, Universal have dug out some extra material for inclusion...

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Aimee Mann is an American singer/songwriter whose music mixes rock, pop and folk. It’s a hard style to describe, but the closest artists I can think of are KT Tunstall and Amy MacDonald as they also blur the pop/rock boundaries and with Amy MacDonald in particular using the acoustic guitar then there are certainly similarities.

”Charmer” is her eighth studio album and the first since 2008’s ”@#%&*! Smilers”. Talking about the album, Mann comments, “I’m fascinated by charming people and the whole idea of charm. It’s hard to remember sometimes that there is usually an agenda behind the act of being charming, and that is what I’m most interested in...

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The Emperors of Wyoming are a country/folk rock band. Hearing that then if asked to name some bands they’re linked to, its unlikely that you’d pick Nirvana, Sonic Youth, Smashing Pumpkins, House of Pain or Garbage, but linked they are. If you look further down this review at the list of band members you’ll notice Butch Vig is the drummer. Butch Vig was a founder member of Garbage and played on all their albums, and as a producer he has worked with numerous bands including those listed above among many others, and was the man who produced Nirvana’s Nevermind album.
The four band members have known each other since the late 1970’s but being in different bands and different parts of the US for the last thirty years it’s only now that they’ve finally managed to all work together...