Iron Maiden - The Book of Souls review

Year : 2015
Genre : Power Metal, Heavy Metal
Label : Sanctuary Copyrights/BMG
Origin : United Kingdom
Rating : 9.99 / 10

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There is a huge amount of lore available already on how the practical and creative processes have been shaped and formed that finally brought this release into the position of being able to collide with some precious sunlight in your immediate area.

It is known that the band members have employed a slightly different creative strategy than they usually tend to rely on. Now they came to the studio - the studio in which they recorded "Brave New World", as well - with competent grasps on the musical building blocks that the outlines of the song ideas seemed to be demanding, but they did not spend excessive amounts of time chiseling out and perfecting microscopic details, instead remained intent at keeping the spirit and Eddie unleashed throughout the recording sessions - what could go wrong?

As result of this new found approach, and, given the experience the members have under their belt with live playing, the production characteristics of the disk are quite close to a live recording. It indeed reflects-, and even cherishes the miniscule amounts - and not more - of mathematical inconsistencies that the music is not just ready-, but even is happy to tolerate on the surface of this style of playfully heated, adventurous, oftentimes escapist tell-a-tale rhetorics, because the meaning behind a chunk or a sequence does not have to suffer any type of relevant harm as result of being "just" approximated with superb organic skills that are driven in real time, and not by unmistakably precise calculations. Read on to know more.

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Motörhead - Bad Magic review

Year : 2015
Genre : Heavy Metal, Hard Rock with superb glam affections
Label : UDR Gmbh
Origin : United Kingdom
Rating : 8.2 / 10

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A fresh Motörhead album probably has no other dormant expectation to live up to than to deliver the same quality Lemmy Kilmister - "Did you Kill, Mister?" - and his collaborators have established themselves with on the primordial metal surface. Regardless of your other alleged fascinations, you would need to be quite biased to deny that this group is doubtless synonymous with the mere ethos of metal, and now that Lemmy is about 666 years old, the music that is pouring out of him - the same music, essentially, but there is nothing wrong with this - gets even more sinister. Sinister Kilmister, the frontman did not really lose anything of his charisma as a performer, and his pipes have started to reflect a lifetime of commitment towards the oh, so sweet primordial form of metal. This commitment is commendable, be it to anything.

From a production standpoint, there is no effect wizardry included on this release, and the agenda, not surprisingly, once again is the exploitative-, no-time-to-fuck-around deliverance of super-boomy sonic assaults, arranged into forms that all seek to reflect their original, out-of-the-naked-amp forms as closely as possible, yet no particular regards (snobbery) are given for the final results of their continuous collisions. This very limitation, which, at the same time, is central to the working mechanics of the disc, also equates with the eternal charm of this group. Read on to know more, because Lemmy knows where you live.

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Meroe - Sick Society review

Year : 2012
Genre : Traditional, Heavy Metal
Label : Independent
Origin : Germany
Official site : >- here - <

Meroe brings to you a deeply traditional and massively positivistic form of heavy metal, an incarnation of the genre that does not even attempt to escape the clutches/hug of the most vintage thematic mood dispositions the style always seemed to embrace, and does not mind doing so even today. The album's title, in my opinion, is misleading, and, perhaps playfully/deliberately so, because the verdict it conveys projects an image of music with a rebellious stance to it, wouldn't you agree? Based on the tastefully minimalistic yet rigorous cover art, one is free to assume sonic goodies on a Kreator thrash metal register of high capacity civil unrest, but be assured that the disc gives THOSE lamentations a rest, instead. The content is highly optimistic in its nature, and a large chunk of its lyrical rhetorics revolves around the simple most intriguing constructs men can approach, and those indeed are women. Don't be misled again : Meroe, as a band, as hive entity, decided to stay away from the approach openly - hah, hah. - cultivated by acts like Steel Panther, an American media-hack band that plays absolutely legitimate glam metal, but features lyrics to it that makes all dads hide their daughters in the closet in terror.

It is not at all so with Germany's Meroe. The band is admirable in the sense that it submits to the evident and obligatory amazement of The Woman, alas!, as a man, exhibiting your evident and obligatory amazement towards The Woman is the Ultimate Technique you will NOT get The Woman by, but, the record nevertheless emerges as an idealistically channeled endeavor courting the OH!, so wishful and optimistic denial of the aforementioned notion. Read on to know more about this album.

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Manowar - The Lord Of Steel review

Year : 2012
Genre : Power Metal
Label : Magic Circle Records
Origin : United States
Rating : 7.0 / 10

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Manowar's The Lord Of Steel for the most part features decently constructed Dungeons & Dragons heavy metal music that shows admirable faithfulness towards the deliberately and free spiritedly cheesy extremes of the testosterone power metal genre. If you are looking for a release that puts an extra layer of hair on your chest and reigns compatible with your carefully crafted live fantasy outfit, then you need not to look further, nor you will need to pull out the time machine out of the barn. The spin has only a little amount of quasi-deviations offered in its fabric, and even those represent a lyrical shift only, remaining on massively power metal tenure from a musical point of view. More on these tame deviations later on. Now, please continue reading if you are intent about knowing this solid, honest, enjoyable-, yet relatively unbalanced power metal cheesefest statement.

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Accept - Stalingrad review

Year : 2012
Genre : Cryptocommunist Heavy Metal
Label : Nuclear Blast Records
Origin : Germany
Rating : 7.0 / 10

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Accept's Stalingrad weighs in as yet another auto-motor sport and pinball machine metal contribution, with an immense fixation on family friendly radio metal and gangshouts, exhibited in the chorus context of this full length. The disc is servile enough - and, as I will attempt to justify, even uninspired in traces, secretly (but not silently) - that mentioning the premiere aspirations it seeks to sound like is Accept - oops - able.

Take Iron Maiden, subtract "The Animal" from it, apply an Aerosmith ballad-salad to support the central ingredients, and don't hold back on the zoo metal part and road-motor sport rhetorics, either. But, most importantly : substitute the terrible lack of an Iron Maiden Animal with some "theme-antics"-, a "Concept", so to say you think your release has potential to sell good with. This time, Accept chose to coat their recent full length into a communist propaganda vibe. Communism, as an ideology, indeed seems to be fixated on "monumentalism" : Stalin is sooooo monumental that the vastness of the sight of that ideology-pattern necessarily summons the communist marching song vibe in you. If it does NOT, you are a sick man and you WILL be reeducated.

If you are a regular here at Noise Shaft, then you know that I already had my fair share of rants about the communist marching song vibe - the link is the same now - that primarily permeates power metal and seeks to convey ACME-epicness, but this traditional heavy metal album baths in it, too. Lionel, look! Now that there is no (apparent) danger of Stalin emerging to unleash an elite assassin chick on us, why not market our comic book fears and make believe paranoia - that's an instant classic I just created - as entertainment? Indeed, why not. Read more to find out how it went for the German veterans.

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Unisonic - Unisonic review

Year : 2012
Genre : Traditional Spandex Heavy Metal
Label : earMUSIC - Worldwide
            Marquee/Avalon - Asia
Origin : Germany
Rating : 7.0 / 10

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Unisonic is a traditional spandex heavy metal project from Germany with many illustrious members in its ranks. Michael Kiske, Kai Hansen, Mandy Meyer, Dennis Ward and Kosta Zafiriou are ready and eager to take you to the old school-, radio friendly side of the all-things-metal planet, as this self titled affair of the Unisonic ensemble is a larger than life flow of pretty continuous tributes towards the skirted Puma shoe and the VHS video clip ethos of the '80s.

The disc is an immediate recommendation for the Scorpions fan, and this notion on its own should give you a general idea of this music on exhibition : this is data with a highly noticeable verse-chorus-verse-intermission-huuuugehuge chorus affection served to the listener throughout, and I personally think that you need to give the record some tolerant facetime before dismissing it as a release solely dwelling on yesterday's music, though it undeniably does that, and nothing much beyond said and satisfied agenda. But there ARE pleasant surprises, and I don't mean the powerless James LaBrie sighs at the end of the sung lines. Read on to find out more about the delivery.

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Steelwing - Zone of Alienation review

Year : 2012
Genre : Heavy Metal
Label : NoiseArt Records
Origin : Sweden
Rating : 9.2 / 10

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Steelwing, fortunately enough, is still into the power metal ethos of the '80s, letting them deliver an album that is all about the charming cheese factor of the intense side of the era. Even better, the Sweden ensemble shows no interest in the most common and overused elements of the style, such as epic determination. The tone of the release, instead, is that of a larger than life-, hilarious sci-fi comic book mood, and it hardly is of accident that the tracks themselves openly reveal a likable, well restrained - ha., ha. - geeky fixation on the '80s entertainment industry. For example, one of the songs is called The Running Man, - see the superb sci-fi movie adaptation and read the book if you did not yet - while another one tributes aerial Anima warfare, and there are other funny references left to be discovered by you, as well.

It would be superwrong on your part if you'd think that the resultant stimuli of this delivery is shaped by everyday average geekdom, thinking that its "mere" love towards its subject matter makes you forgetful of its pessimistically assumable musical shortcomings. That is not the case. Shame on your for being a pessimist, you are wrong again. I dare say that Steelwing brings such an apt level of inventive, relevant power metal musicianship and a readiness to deliver abundant variation on 111% steam power, that they steadily emerge as a smooth operator of-, as a counter-inspirational rival force to the template established by power metal origo Iran Moiden. Or some band with a similar name, help me out here. (I'm the first human to write down "Iran Moiden", what is up with that, people? I'm also the first to write : "Let me help you, Jesus", which saddens me even more. Read on to find out subsequent percepts about this imaginative, gloom-free (thank fucking God for that) power metal delivery.


At heart, Zone of Alienation is classic Thundersteel - \m/ THUNDERST3333-333-333333L \m/ - warfare in a sense that the band never loses its sight from the intensified patterns and forms of the style. While fortunately all the musical power metal chordpassage-platitudes and chord-conflicts ARE present on the release, a masterful sense of what to do (and how to do) with this elements is central defining factorial of this ripe contribution. Do not be superfast with your judgment towards this release, as the spin is not reluctant to unleash comic book cheese cannons on you right after its tasteful atmospheric intro, and I, for one, was hesitant to appreciate the initial cheesebomb into my face. Moments later, my mood was converted without any opportunity given to lament if to reconsider. That is the primal charm of this release, I think. It brings extremely straightforward and rigorously realized musical ideas along the power metal compositional niche, but not for a second it seeks to depress you. I have nothing against the vocals herein, in fact, the singer dude is able to surprise you on quite a few occasions with awesome, pretty much unrealistically high pitched power metal veils, which is nothing short of epic, in my opinion. "Look, I have no balls, but I lack them epicallyyyyyyyyy!"

On another complementary note, I especially am satisfied with the melodic and instrumental content of the outing : the music is - the following is an inept but proper way to put it - "unusually" melodic on this spin, which is a certain trait to behold gratefully. The band, first and foremost, brings what legit, real deal paua metal has to bring at immediate threshold value, and with this act, it is efficient to register as nothing less than its "mere" self right away, but there is a fine catch to behold yet. Regardless how the results are totally satisfactory already, the band members always seek and find a way to put a little something extra to make it more melodic, more entertaining than what the basic fabric offers on its own stable merits. As result of this, the basic fabrics emerge as grateful sonic constructs on their own, having been skillfully and impertinently flattered by playful, yet sober deviations from their primer characteristics.

The LP produces an intimate-, and simultaneously intense sound that exhibits both a hilarious retro vibe and the polished freshness of contemporary production standards, refraining wisely from the raw, bombastic nuclear - oops. - sound other releases choose to cultivate. All in all, Steelwing - Zone of Alienation is a release I can't fathom how you could be disappointed by. One highly recommended, exigent, fun listen for sure.

Rating : 9.2 / 10

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