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29 Aug 2017

Eternal Champion - The Armor of Ire (No Remorse Records - 2016)


"The Armor of Ire" by Texas's Eternal Champion is one of those albums that went completely under my radar during the year that it was released and instead reached me by word of mouth later on. And it's no surprise that word traveled regarding this album, as it is indeed one of the strongest I've come across in quite a while. 

I've only just began to familiarize myself with No Remorse Records, and so far they seem to be churning out a lot of good stuff. I've gotten "The Armor of Ire" on a good looking vinyl release, including a map and description of vocalist Jason Tarpey's fictional universe in which some of the lyrics take place. Now if that isn't delightfully nerdy I don't know what is! In fact, from now on if a band does not include a map of their fictional universe, I will consider it measly and underwhelming.

And army marches out of my speakers as the monumental "I am the Hammer" leads the way into the realms of Arginor and the Western Isles (better get that map out!), all layered under ominous keyboards. Epicnes aside, this one-minute intro is probably the only skipable part of the album, luckily it's the first track and that's easily done without you having to lift and place down the needle on your player in the middle of the sides playing time. Jason's vocals have a cavernous reverb applied to them that adds to his hollow singing style. His voice took some getting used to for me, but my now I wouldn't change it for anything, he even bursts out the occasional high-pitched "Ah!" à la Jon Oliva which is absolutely charming. The song is slow and monumental and rather minimalistic without getting monotonous or boring, in fact it usually requires several listens before I can move onward onto the next track. The lyrics are well-written and the chorus is absolutely fantastic.

Following that ten-pointer of a number is the title-track, "The Armor of Ire", which features melodic riffing in a manner that actually draws my mind to the 8-bit Mega Man games, and I mean that in the absolutely best way possible. The fast riffing and tight drums are glued together by the drawn out vocal melodies, and there is a lot more going on in the background than what you notice at first listen. You hardly notice that five minutes have passed before the song is over, it's just that seamlessly put together.

"The Last King of Pictdom" is a bouncier track that opens with drummer (and multi-instrumentalist) Arthur Rizk pounding a marching beat on the snare before moving into a triplet-riff. The twin guitar melodies and triplet riffing actually makes me think about Thin Lizzy, especially when the lead guitar melodies after the final chorus kicks in. I believe that it also Arthur that deals out a fine guitar solo during the tracks climax.

Lo and behold! I am about to not encourage you to skip an instrumental interlude, which is my typical reaction to these kind of tracks. Instead I must admit that during my first listens to "The Armor of Ire" I wasn't even aware that they were there, because they are actually woven into the tracks as an integral part of the music instead of annoying interruptions. "Blood Ice" is an instrumental interlude done right and doesn't overstay its welcome in any way, and when listening to my vinyl record it serves as the intro to side B. It also features some interesting pieces of music instead of just a carpet of synthesizers that are supposed to "set the mood" before the next track.

The interlude moves into "The Cold Sword" without any interruption, a galloping affair with some Maiden-esque guitar leads, but which manages without becoming some sort of cheap rip-off. This is the song on the album that has the most drive to it, and Jason shows that he can have bit more of a roar to his voice from time to time.

After moving past the greatness of the opening track, "Invoker" quickly became my favorite song on the album. It's a very dynamic number, and I hope a given part of all of Eternal Champions live sets. Once again it has be mentioned that the lyrics are very well-written, as it oh so easy for this type of lyrics to become beyond cheesy. Instead they are captivating and interesting, and nowhere is it better demonstrated than here, where an assassin waits to strike at a summoning ritual before they raise the old gods of H.P. Lovecraft's mythos. It you're a fan of sword and sorcery, this will be right up your alley. The song switches between clean plucking verses and inventive riffing in the more intense parts. The chorus is among the greats, the final guitar solo though sounds like it could use a couple of more takes.

"Sing a Last Song for the Valdese" is the longest of the album, and accordingly epic and worthy of its six minutes. We finally are treated to some flashier bass parts (also performed by Arthur), a thing that I would gladly have heard more of this during the previous songs on the album. There's a lot things going on here. The band seems to have played around a bit with their song formula here instead of going for traditional verses and choruses, but in no way does it sound amiss. The track is in no way a contender to the opening, but no less epic either way and a fitting last song before we move on to the outro.

"Shade Gate" is a short instrumental outro with a simple, repeating, guitar melody and surprisingly features a quite from Skeletor in the Masters of the Universe movie from 1987. It fit's the overall tone of the album, but nothing that I listen to each time I give the album a spin. Instead I'm probably busy flipping the record over to start over from the beginning.

Arthur Rizk seems to be a jack of all trades as I found out that he is also responsible for the engineering, mixing and mastering. He's done a fine job with all of his undertakings here, with the album sounding warm, yet crisp here it needs to and not unnecessarily loud. In my natural fashion I would have liked the bass to be a bit louder in the mix during the regular riffing, but it manages to cut through well enough the times it does something out of the ordinary.

Verdict:
This album has an overall aura of being very honest and genuine. There's a lot of bands doing this style at the moment, but the dedication of Eternal Champion shines through in such a way that you know that they are the real deal. Believe me, I searched hard and long to find something point out that I wasn't entirely satisfied with, but beyond the intro and outro being somewhat skipable there is really nothing to complain about. "The Armor of Ire" feasts upon 8,2/10 nations blood.

Eternal Champion on Facebook
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22 Aug 2017

Dreadful Fate - The Sin of Sodom (Iron Fist Productions - 2017)


Dreadful Fate is a newly formed band from Sweden paying tribute to the Teutonic thrash metal of old. Their debut demo was released on cassette by Iron Fist Productions and while it could use some more variation, one cannot help to wonder what they would come up with when given a longer run-time.

The demo kicks off with the aptly named title track "The Sin of Sodom", which quickly demonstrates what this demo is all about: pure, old-school black/thrash. Drummer Corpse Skelethor (AKA: Per Karlsson) is one of my favorite drummers in the Swedish scene, due to his past work in Nominon, and although the material here is very straight forward and does not call for any flashy drumming there is something very precise about his performance that always speaks to me. His cymbal-work is top notch during the double-kick parts and his fills are chaotic, while still calculated. The song also features some tight riffing from another favorite in the scene, Death Ripper (AKA: Johan Jansson), as well as a delightfully awful guitar solo. All in all it's a fine track, with a chorus that's easy to remember, but in the end it's outshone by the following track.

"Unholy Lust" offers up more of the same furious thrash as the track before, but dials down the tempo a tad, with no loss of effect though. The chorus where vocalist Bestial shrieks "Satan's hammer hits again and again!" has some cool rhythms and breaks that get stuck in my head every time I listen to it. Towards the middle the track moves into mid-tempo territories and really gets my blood pumping. The same type of atonal solo leads into the last chorus of the track that definitely is my favorite on the demo.

Last into the fray is a cover of Kreators classic "Tormentor", which is done with what seems like absolutely no effort at all. The cover is however played without any changes made to it and therefore I would probably rarely put this version on rather than the original, but I guess the urge to pay tribute to the old masters was too appealing for the band to give up the opportunity. I have to give them that the track has a really good energy to it with the fattened-up sound and backing vocals in the chorus. A fitting track for the demo, but I wouldn't re-record it for a full-length album.

I'm glad to hear that the demo isn't overproduced in any way, but also not UNDER-produced. Both drums and vocals sound honest, the guitars are crisp and the bass manages to cut through the mix, it's all very good for a demo. The cassettes seem to be high quality as well and didn't add that much noise at all during my first listening. A lot of other bands paying tribute to the days of yore tend to go a bit overboard with the shitty productions, Dreadful Fate instead gives a good example how to get that garage-sound while still making it sound as good as possible.

Verdict:
It's not much to go by, with only two original tracks and a cover song, but I'm excited to see what Dreadful Fate comes up with next and what type of variations they will throw in to keep things interesting on a longer run-time. I'm personally keeping my fingers crossed for some slower, mid-tempo tracks along the lines of what Sodom sometimes offers up. "The Sin of Sodom" is somewhat of a one-trick-pony, but that trick is done with admirable results. Given the members of the band, and the quality of the demo, I assume it won't be long until a label picks them up and we'll hear more of Dreadful Fate. Until then "The Sin of Sodom" earns 6,8/10 signs of evil.

Dreadful Fate on Facebook
Dreadful Fate on YouTube

16 Aug 2017

Interview: Michael Stavrakakis (Doomocracy)


Earlier this year Doomocracy released their album "Visions & Creatures of Imagination" through Steel Gallery Records. I've now had the honor of speaking to vocalist Michael Stavrakakis about the album, the Greek scene and record collecting.

Interview conducted on 2017-08-15:

Hey Michael! First of congratulations on your latest album "Visions & Creatures of Imagination", you must be very satisfied with the response you have received at this point? I myself suspect it will place quite high on my best of 2017-list. 

Hey David, thank you for your kind words. Our new album "Visions & Creatures of Imagination" has indeed received wonderful reviews from all over the world. We've worked hard to compose and record this album and we are very satisfied with the reception of Magazines e-zines and fans. I think it is a step forward for Doomocracy to more heavy and eastern paths while maintaining the doom metal elements present at all times. We have been picked as album of the month in several important magazines so I do hope we will be in the top lists for 2017.

To my knowledge you are responsible for a large part of the songwriting for Doomocracy. Did you face any challenges with writing a follow-up album this time? It usually involves some more time constraints than writing for a debut that you basically could have been working on for several years even before forming the band. 

I write both music and lyrics just like every band member of Doomocracy. The music you hear in both of our albums is based on teamwork and everyone in the band helps with ideas, riffs, melodies and lyrics. The challenge we faced writing music for our second album was big, as I think our debut album "The End is Written" had set a high quality standard for Doomocracy. We did not rush (as you saw we released our second album two and a half years after our debut) as we wanted to promote our debut album in the best possible way, including more than ten concerts around Europe. When we started composing music for our second album, we were a bit stressed but in a good way, as to which direction to follow in order to compose a worthy successor to "The End is Written". So basically the challenge we faced was to take our music a step further in all aspects (compositions, production, promotion, artwork), a challenge which I think we faced in the best possible way. We spend many hours in the studio to work all songs to the final detail and I am confident to say that we have produced an album worthy and even better than our debut.

Your lyrics seem to always have a story to tell, among others I sense some Egyptian themes this time. Do you do a lot of research for historical- or mythological lyrics in order to be accurate? Or is it more often stories "out of your own mind" so to say?

For us writing lyrics is an important process. We don't just write lyrics to get the songs going. We have many lyrical concepts in the new album, but not a certain specific concept. In other words "Visions & Creatures of Imagination" is not a concept album, but contains different stories, some fiction and some experiential. We used themes from Egyptian mythology for the song "Lucid Plains of Ra", which is a very important song in our album, as it was the main influence for the album cover as well. The lyrics of the song were written by our guitarist Angelos Tzanis and I know that he did some research before writing the lyrics as he also loves Egyptian mythology. For the rest of the songs we have lyrics influenced by Greek mythology, religion and life itself with all its agonies and anguish.



You mastered the album at Morrisound Studios. A place I mainly associate with Savatage- and related projects and above all: death metal albums of the 90'ties, but not so much doom metal. What made you want to work with Jim Morris?

We mixed and mastered the album at Morrisound Studios with Jim Morris, a man who is responsible for milestone productions in heavy metal for major bands like Crimson Glory, Savatage, Iced Earth and of course Death. We love his mix in all those bands and especially in Death. Working with him was a learning process for us and we are satisfied 100% from the mixing and mastering process. As for the reason why we decided to work with Jim Morris other than his great productions overall... we actually wanted a different approach for our mix. Not that we weren't satisfied with the mix of our debut album, but we wanted to try a production that is less compressed and has a more live feeling to it. Nowadays most European productions seem to be over compressed and that is something we did not want for our second album, as like I said we wanted to give a more live feeling to the mix. With the great help and guidance of Jim Morris we were able to achieve this.

I'm glad to see that the album is released on several formats this time around, both digitally, on CD and vinyl. Particularly vinyl is close to my heart, is this something that you guys in the band pushed for? And are you personally a collector of physical releases as well?

We are trying to release our albums in all possible formats. There are people who download albums through iTunes, amazon and so on, so although it is not our preferred music format we wanted to include that option as well. Of course we released the album on CD, but our main passion and effort was, and will be to release our music on vinyl. We are all vinyl collectors and we love its sound and everything else that comes to owning an album in vinyl. I was personally touched as I just yesterday received the vinyl records for "Visions & Creatures of Imagination". From my point of view the new vinyl is amazing both in sound and artwork and is a must for every vinyl collector. We will always do everything possible to release our music on vinyl.

Speaking of the productions, and the vinyl format: have you done a dedicated vinyl mastering for the album, or is the mastering for the CD- and digital platforms fit to be used on the LP as well?

We discussed this with Jim Morris and he told us that the mastering he did is ideal both for CD and vinyl. We did a test pressing just to make sure that the sound would be good, which it really was. So we used the same mastering after all.

Is there any releases in particular that you collect? Bands, genres, albums from certain regions, or do you just in general prefer to have your music collection on physical formats?

I collect all kinds of good music, especially heavy metal of course. But I don't just collect doom metal albums for example. I don't buy music in digital format and I usually buy the vinyl version of an album, unless there is no vinyl version so then I buy the CD to support the band.

Are you happy with the way your label, Steel Gallery Records, have handled your releases so far? Can we expect to see you continuing to work with them? Must be nice being signed to a label in your home country. 

We are very happy with Steel Gallery Records, which is why we chose to renew our contract with them. Working with a Greek label has many benefits as by doing this we are also supporting the Greek heavy metal scene, but we also have great communication with Kostas Athanasoglou, Steel Gallery's owner which is a crucial factor for us in choosing a record label and Kostas is doing everything he can to promote our music. If we receive a better proposal from a bigger record label we will discuss it within the band, but for the time being we are very satisfied with our current record label.


People seem to have a tendency to throw around Candlemass-comparisons when speaking about Doomocracy, but I think there is more beyond that. Do you think that you guys have any influences that usually go over the head of the press and first-time listeners? Be it influences from other bands or anything else. 

It's natural for people who have not listened much to doom metal music to just say "these guys sound like Candlemass". By all means it is not a bad comment to say that we sound like Candlemass, as they are one of the best doom metal bands of all time. Just as Candlemass's main influence was Black Sabbath or Trouble for example. People tend to do this: Instead of describing the music, they just say “they sound like this or that”. It's the easy way. People who have listened to a lot of doom metal music understand that, of course we are influenced by Candlemass and Solitude Aeturnus (and many other bands) but we have developed our own personal style in sound and compositions taking our music a step further. The more albums we produce the more this will be more evident. It happens with all bands you know… with their first albums people compare them to other bands. But as the bands produce more albums they develop a more personal style, so fans-critics stop doing this.

According to the information I've found online Doomocracy is your first venture in the realms of metal, have you been involved in any other musical projects that have released albums before?

I was involved in some Greek cover bands in rock, metal, funk and blues music. After a while I recorded an album with a Greek alternative metal band called Master Reset, which started with a different more progressive metal concept but developed into a more modern style. So right after the album release I quit the band to find another music direction. Thank God, I met my good friends Minas Vasilakis and Angelos Tzanis (Doomocracy's drummer and guitarist) and we formed a new doom metal band called Doomocracy!

I can't say that I'm very well versed in the Greek- or Crete scene. Do you have any bands, present or past, from your area that have inspired you? If not musically, in any other way. 

We have some great metal bands in Greece and the Greek Metal scene is going through a long spring period the last years. Just to name a few bands you might already know: Sacral Rage, Dexter Ward, Wardrum, SiXforNine, Pulse R, Diviner, Inner Wish, Suicidal Angels, Immensity, Exarsis and many more. You should really invest in the Greek Metal scene as you will find many gems in all genres. In Crete we had some very good bands but right now they are all in quiet mode. Still be aware for new releases by Winter Crescent and Chaos Eternal in the coming future.

Thanks you very much for your answers Michael, I hope to hear more from you and Doomocracy soon! Is there anything you would like to add?

Thank you very much for this interesting interview and your support David! Be sure to check out the vinyl release of our second album "Visions & Creatures of Imagination". We will tour Germany in December 2017 so we hope to see our fans there. We are already composing music for our third album and it sounds really good. So be assured Doomocracy is here to stay! Thank you for your support! See you on the road!

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