Freedom Hawk - Take All You Can (Ripple Music) [Rich Piva]
Virginia Beach's Freedom Hawk is a much-loved band in the circles where they run. A new Freedom Hawk record is a celebrated event, but with their release of Take All You Can, the band may have given us their masterpiece amongst and already excellent catalog of killer records. With Take All You Can, Freedom Hawk perfects the proto metal/Seventies hard rock stylings that so many bands are looking to borrow from and/or emulate today. From the guitar work, the production, the vocals, the keys, and everything else about this record, we have an alignment of the desert stars that has resulted in rock and roll perfection.
The opener Age Of The Idiot sets the tone. What a track. The guitar work and tone on this song is just awesome, never mind how catchy it is. We All Need Rock N’ Roll is proto perfection. Thin Lizzy, NWOBHM, and any other great 70s band all wrapped into a six-minute package (with cowbell). The twin guitar work is on full display here. Seize The Day has guitarist and vocalist T.R. Morton going full Ozzy on us, but almost if Ozzy sang for Deep Purple, and it is a beautiful thing. Never To Return has some serious (very) early Maiden vibes but a more blues, more 70s US rock type version. I am not sure if that makes sense to you, but it does to me which is not the best look in a review for others, but what can you do. Skies So Blue is catchy bluesy perfection and the closing track, Desert Song, introduces keys to Take All You Can, and it may be the best closer I have heard all year.
September has been completely on fire with some absolute killer releases, but the Freedom Hawk album has outshined them all. With Take All You Can, Freedom Hawk have concocted the perfect formula that so many bands have been trying to create, leveraging all the great bands and influences before them. This is the best of what any of the proto, heavy blues rock, or stoner bands out there today have delivered, this is rock and roll perfect, and we all need rock and roll. 10/10
Wolfheart – King Of The North (Napalm Rcords) [D. Gilmore]
Sounding like the lovechild of Dimmu Borgir and Blind Guardian these Finnish metallers tread an interesting path on record number six, King Of The North. Opener Skyforger kicks in with a beautiful piano melody which gives way too an overstated guitar line and subtle use of a choir until finally opening the flood gates with galloping drums and some very harsh, black metal vocals. This morphs into clean singing and a soaring chorus, a trend that continues for the rest of the record. The guitar work is simply awesome on KOTN with some epic solos that bring to mind the feeling of standing on a frozen mountain top in Nordic blizzard.
The interplay between the guitars and keyboards deserves special mention. Both players form a sonic duality that plays off one another perfectly. Killswitch Engage frontman Jessie Leech guests on track Ancestor. His vocals fit very well within Wolfhearts established framework and lend an extra layer to this song. Elsewhere Nile’s axe welder Karl Sanders exhibits his talents to the track Cold Flame which is a real high point on this record.
Overall King Of The North is an accomplished and polished melodic death metal album with a healthy dose of black metal sprinkled in for good measure. For fans of Dimmu Borgir, Power wolf and Satyricon. 8/10
Kings Of Mercia - Kings Of Mercia (Metal Blade Records) [Matt Bladen]
Kings Of Mercia features a founding member of Fates Warning, a founding member of Armored Saint and a founding member of FM. So you'd expect it to be full of experience if nothing else. I'm also keenly aware that one of these things is not the same but Fates Warning guitarist Jim Matheos wanted to write music that was heavy and dynamic, but not especially progressive, he also wanted to focus on hooks, writing songs that were more in the hard rock sound.
Because of this he recruited FM frontman Steve Overland to provide the vocals, on the urging of music journalists Jeff Wagner and Dave Ling who suggested that the bluesy vocals of Englishman Overland would suit this bands style. Despite writing in separate countries they clicked musically, Jim writing the music, the band rounded out by Armored Saint/Fates Warning bassist Joey Vera, for a it of familiarity and legendary session man Simon Phillips on drums for additional talented playing. Steve wrote the lyrics his storytelling working wonders on the semi-acoustic ballad Too Far Gone which along with Humankind, the first track they played together, give you a strong idea of what they do as a band.
Matheos' riffs are direct and dirty, favouring distortion and fuzz on tracks such as Liberate Me. The rhythm section of Vera and Phillips is powerful and pumping like a locomotive engine, but can also be dexterous and restrained. As usual Overland's vocals are brilliant, he has such a soulful, bluesy set of lungs that he can make anything sound good. While many who love the AOR of FM will find it a bit heavy, though not Everyday Angels is a track that fans of heavier side of metal will love.
There will be the prog metal of Fates Warning that will perhaps find it a bit too straightforward, though Your Life sounds like Evergrey. But much like Matheos' bandmates Ray Alder and Mark Zonder did with A-Z, this is hard rock as a way to do something different creatively. Kings Of Mercia pays off as a band/album concept with 10 sleek rock tracks from a well oiled machine. 8/10
Ars Onirica - II Lost (Ardua Music) [Paul Scoble]
Ars Onirica are an Italian death/doom band. The band originally formed in 2003 with a full band lineup, which split fairly soon without releasing any material. However, in 2018 Ars Onirica restarted as a solo project of founder member, and multi-instrumentalist Alessandro Sforza, who is also a member of the bands Internoir and Veil Of Conspiracy. As its name suggests II Lost is Ars Onirica’s second album following 3 years after the debut album I Cold. The style is broadly death/doom of the Nineties variety with clear influences from Paradise Lost and Katatonia, but also has more contemporary influences from the dark metal, black metal and post black metal scenes. The songs themselves contain two main sounds; one of huge, driving doom with harsh vocals. The other style is softer and less aggressive, with smooth, soft clean vocals which have an ethereal, otherworldly feel.
Both styles have very tuneful melody leads playing over the riffs, whether they are the harsh or soft, in a similar way to a lot of the death/doom bands already mentioned, in particular this reminded me of Gregor Mackintosh’s guitar work with Paradise Lost. This melody guitar is also used very effectively to fuse together some of the different sounding sections. Probably the best example of this is the song My Heart…. Your Tomb, where slow and very heavy sections with nasty vocals nestles with the lush softer, ethereal parts in a way that works very well, none of the transitions are abrupt or jarring, the different sections flow into each other in a very pleasing way. Part of this is due to how each of the different parts feel, this is a song (and album) that is filled with sadness, regret and melancholy, which is imbued into each note or chord giving the whole a feeling of completeness.
There are elements of Ars Onirica’s sound that strays outside the doom template. There are several places where I can hear influences from the black metal or post black metal scenes. On the track Daydream the first half is heavy Doom, but after a short quiet section the song drops into a blast beat and tremolo picked riff and suddenly this sounds like modern black metal or post black metal. To my ears this sounds a little bit like Violet Cold, and a lot like ColdWorld the excellent German post black metal band. There are other black metal elements at the end of the track Forever And A Day, where there is a part that includes blasting, tremolo picked riffs and a harsh voice that is pushed in more of a black metal direction. II Lost comes to an end with the song On The Wall, which is a huge, sombre monster of a song. It is full of very tuneful melody leads, and builds in intensity and drive as the song moves along. The song is full of mournful energy, but at the end it becomes softer and seems to find a resolution, before fading out.
II Lost is a great piece of doom. It’s affecting and filled with emotion, the juxtaposition between the Heavier parts with the harsh vocals, and the softer sections with the softer, more ethereal feel makes this album feel very cathartic. Every harsh section is immediately tempered by softer parts so the more extreme elements don’t overwhelm the songs, and the sweet ethereal parts never dominate, this is a very well balanced album. The little tastes of modern black metal make this feel up to date and adds some extra textures so the album never feels stale or repetitive. I have really enjoyed listening to this album, and I advise you to give it a listen as well, you won’t be disappointed! 8/10