Spirit Adrift: Divided By Darkness (20 Buck Spin)
The founder of Spirit Adrift Nate Garrett also plays with Arizona death metal merchants Gatecreeper, however Spirit Adrift is not as abusive to the ears as his other job. No this band, now on their third album, play a mixture of doom and traditional heavy metal that gets your head banging from the opening dual guitar melodies of We Will Not Die it's got that classic Ozzy/Dio vibe to it, which is deliberate as Nate Garrett said in a recent issue of Kerrang that he obsessed over the first two Ozzy solo albums while writing this record and that giving up smoking and training his voice has meant he gives his best vocal performance, along with listening to George Jones. What a performance it is, the compositions brim with experience bringing in some thrash and prog/ambient influences, the gallop of the title track, the floaty guitar solo on The Way Of Return is very Pink Floyd (I mean I'd be expecting a subpoena).
On Born Into Fire especially he's got the fist pump of Grand Magus down to a tee, big vocals and fret burning lead playing. As I said this album is tapping into that nostalgic metal sound exemplified by Haunt who they will be touring Arizona and California with. It's a cracking album this much like the Haunt records one man's vision played out with help from some great musicians around him, it's also quite righteous as well with Garrett's lyrics used to portray how he feels about the world especially toxic masculinity on Hear Her (by way of Zombies) and Living Light has some great additional vocals from Kayla Dixon of Witch Mountain on the choral ending. Divided By Darkness is a brilliant traditional metal album, the Yanks are doing this kind of thing very well at the moment so long may it continue! 8/10
Irongate: The Tree (Self Released)
It's 12 hours from Irongate's home town of Portsmouth, Ohio to New Orleans Louisiana but it seems that the sounds of the big easy (and one LA band in particular) have travelled up north as they have influenced Irongate no end. We are in foggy, heavy, low slung riff territory here nods to COC, Down and BLS abound from the grinding Anymore to the stuttering guitar chops on In The Ground. This is a band who pride themselves on leaving everything on stage in every performance this band hail from a blue collar iron making town and this can be heard in their music as they mix the heavier sounds of uncle Zakk (Spinning The Wheel) with more relaxed emotional numbers such as My Song a track that has a little Staind or Alice In Chains to it. It's a heavy Southern metal record from the opening bars across the 8 songs, the kind of music you can hear playing in Sons Of Anarchy. The Tree I believe is their debut record but it's a slick mixture of groove and southern metal/rock influences that brings in more of Zakk's Pride And Glory days towards the end. A testament then that Strength and Determination are merciless forever. 7/10
Midnight Priest: Aggressive Hauntings (Metal On Metal Records)
This is silly, from the melodramatic organ that opens the record, an organ piece that is trying to emulate Orff, it's the first song on this occult, black magic inspired release that owes it's exisitence to Mercyful Fate and the ongoing resurgence in 80's styled heavy metal (as mentioned above). Yes Aggressive Hauntings is the third album from Portuguese leather and stud metal band Midnight Priest who take the occult trappings to the nth degree putting them with bog standard speed metal. The vocals are a little screechy and musically it's not particularly adventurous, Eyes In The Dark is pretty neat but the rest of the album forms one long song and I quickly lost interest. If you are a diehard Mercyful Fate 5/10
Nothin2Heavy: EP (Counter Cult Records)
No we are a metal blog by design, yes we do occasionally go off piste (mainly Alex) but would we really review a band called Nothin2Heavy? Well despite the terrible syntax of their name Nothin2Heavy do at least have rock aspirations most notably that of grunge, you remember grunge right? It was that next big thing of the early 90's that was counterculture to the excessive rock of the 80's. This Mancunian trio have tried their hardest to replicate this sound as faithfully as possible. There is an urgency to this record as if the band turn up, plugged in and just laid down these four songs, there's half-mumbled vocals that occasionally shout in the realms of Seether with some low grooving grunge riffs but there are solos, so Kurt Cobain must be turning in his grave, they even bring some snotty punk on Reject. The band were formed as a bid to keep their record label afloat and their name comes from the consistent requests for something not to heavy but while not as heavy as a band like Conan they do have a danger about them and they like their music rough and ready with a lot of feedback, aggression and a sarcastic sneer. 6/10
The founder of Spirit Adrift Nate Garrett also plays with Arizona death metal merchants Gatecreeper, however Spirit Adrift is not as abusive to the ears as his other job. No this band, now on their third album, play a mixture of doom and traditional heavy metal that gets your head banging from the opening dual guitar melodies of We Will Not Die it's got that classic Ozzy/Dio vibe to it, which is deliberate as Nate Garrett said in a recent issue of Kerrang that he obsessed over the first two Ozzy solo albums while writing this record and that giving up smoking and training his voice has meant he gives his best vocal performance, along with listening to George Jones. What a performance it is, the compositions brim with experience bringing in some thrash and prog/ambient influences, the gallop of the title track, the floaty guitar solo on The Way Of Return is very Pink Floyd (I mean I'd be expecting a subpoena).
On Born Into Fire especially he's got the fist pump of Grand Magus down to a tee, big vocals and fret burning lead playing. As I said this album is tapping into that nostalgic metal sound exemplified by Haunt who they will be touring Arizona and California with. It's a cracking album this much like the Haunt records one man's vision played out with help from some great musicians around him, it's also quite righteous as well with Garrett's lyrics used to portray how he feels about the world especially toxic masculinity on Hear Her (by way of Zombies) and Living Light has some great additional vocals from Kayla Dixon of Witch Mountain on the choral ending. Divided By Darkness is a brilliant traditional metal album, the Yanks are doing this kind of thing very well at the moment so long may it continue! 8/10
Irongate: The Tree (Self Released)
It's 12 hours from Irongate's home town of Portsmouth, Ohio to New Orleans Louisiana but it seems that the sounds of the big easy (and one LA band in particular) have travelled up north as they have influenced Irongate no end. We are in foggy, heavy, low slung riff territory here nods to COC, Down and BLS abound from the grinding Anymore to the stuttering guitar chops on In The Ground. This is a band who pride themselves on leaving everything on stage in every performance this band hail from a blue collar iron making town and this can be heard in their music as they mix the heavier sounds of uncle Zakk (Spinning The Wheel) with more relaxed emotional numbers such as My Song a track that has a little Staind or Alice In Chains to it. It's a heavy Southern metal record from the opening bars across the 8 songs, the kind of music you can hear playing in Sons Of Anarchy. The Tree I believe is their debut record but it's a slick mixture of groove and southern metal/rock influences that brings in more of Zakk's Pride And Glory days towards the end. A testament then that Strength and Determination are merciless forever. 7/10
Midnight Priest: Aggressive Hauntings (Metal On Metal Records)
This is silly, from the melodramatic organ that opens the record, an organ piece that is trying to emulate Orff, it's the first song on this occult, black magic inspired release that owes it's exisitence to Mercyful Fate and the ongoing resurgence in 80's styled heavy metal (as mentioned above). Yes Aggressive Hauntings is the third album from Portuguese leather and stud metal band Midnight Priest who take the occult trappings to the nth degree putting them with bog standard speed metal. The vocals are a little screechy and musically it's not particularly adventurous, Eyes In The Dark is pretty neat but the rest of the album forms one long song and I quickly lost interest. If you are a diehard Mercyful Fate 5/10
Nothin2Heavy: EP (Counter Cult Records)
No we are a metal blog by design, yes we do occasionally go off piste (mainly Alex) but would we really review a band called Nothin2Heavy? Well despite the terrible syntax of their name Nothin2Heavy do at least have rock aspirations most notably that of grunge, you remember grunge right? It was that next big thing of the early 90's that was counterculture to the excessive rock of the 80's. This Mancunian trio have tried their hardest to replicate this sound as faithfully as possible. There is an urgency to this record as if the band turn up, plugged in and just laid down these four songs, there's half-mumbled vocals that occasionally shout in the realms of Seether with some low grooving grunge riffs but there are solos, so Kurt Cobain must be turning in his grave, they even bring some snotty punk on Reject. The band were formed as a bid to keep their record label afloat and their name comes from the consistent requests for something not to heavy but while not as heavy as a band like Conan they do have a danger about them and they like their music rough and ready with a lot of feedback, aggression and a sarcastic sneer. 6/10