Speed/power/thrash metal band White Tower come from Thessaloniki and name themselves after the White Tower in that famous city. Night Hunters is their second album and a significant increase from their debut, it's more mature, bolder, brasher and heavier, influenced by Megadeth as much as it is Maiden, Anthrax as it does Accept. Night Hunters features lighting quick riffs, chugging mid tempos tracks and great vocals.
It's classic heavy metal and it surprised me how much better White Tower sound on this record in comparison to their debut and EP, they've got the viciousness of Overkill, Kreator and Helstar the screeching vocals of Gago Karapetian are wild and varied from those early days of thrash metal alongside the NWOBHM/speed metal scene.
Theodoros Trohidis drumming is a blitzkrieg of percussion in union with Nick Vekis' bass and Orestis Koulas' rhythm guitar bring the gallop to Banshee and a meaty chug on Warmonger while on the NWOTHM-like Tear Up The Night Nikos Patronopoulos gets to shred like a madman. Night Hunters then is a classic thrash/speed/heavy metal record that caught me by surprise with how good it is. 8/10
Yovel - The Great Silence (Self Released)
Yovel are an extreme metal band who follow a very strong and right on agenda of being proudly Anti-Capitalist, Anti-Corruption and Anti-Oppression, using their mantra of "Better Days Will Come/By Any Means Necessary" they have another five expansive tracks of atmospheric black metal which rages with the fires of revolution and resilience.
Their new record is called The Great Silence and it is "of the oppressed, for the oppressed", this mysterious band have made sure to tell anyone as much as possible that fair pay was given to everyone who worked on it and no GenAI programmes were used, it's honest music coming from human beings with soul. Interspersed with spoken word passes that preach their message or from new reports that back up why their beliefs are so important.
The haunting Corpses On Leave drifts from riffy mid-pace into acoustics while Better Days Will Come builds from post rock ambience into triumphant, defiant black metal all blastbeats and trem picking in the mid section of this 11 minute epic. The Great Silence is more intelligent black metal that tries to be the antithesis of what can be quite a problematic scene. 8/10
Nothing Thrives - Tales Of Disgrace (Ouga Booga And The Mighty Oug Recordings)
It's classic heavy metal and it surprised me how much better White Tower sound on this record in comparison to their debut and EP, they've got the viciousness of Overkill, Kreator and Helstar the screeching vocals of Gago Karapetian are wild and varied from those early days of thrash metal alongside the NWOBHM/speed metal scene.
Theodoros Trohidis drumming is a blitzkrieg of percussion in union with Nick Vekis' bass and Orestis Koulas' rhythm guitar bring the gallop to Banshee and a meaty chug on Warmonger while on the NWOTHM-like Tear Up The Night Nikos Patronopoulos gets to shred like a madman. Night Hunters then is a classic thrash/speed/heavy metal record that caught me by surprise with how good it is. 8/10
Yovel - The Great Silence (Self Released)
Yovel are an extreme metal band who follow a very strong and right on agenda of being proudly Anti-Capitalist, Anti-Corruption and Anti-Oppression, using their mantra of "Better Days Will Come/By Any Means Necessary" they have another five expansive tracks of atmospheric black metal which rages with the fires of revolution and resilience.
Their new record is called The Great Silence and it is "of the oppressed, for the oppressed", this mysterious band have made sure to tell anyone as much as possible that fair pay was given to everyone who worked on it and no GenAI programmes were used, it's honest music coming from human beings with soul. Interspersed with spoken word passes that preach their message or from new reports that back up why their beliefs are so important.
The haunting Corpses On Leave drifts from riffy mid-pace into acoustics while Better Days Will Come builds from post rock ambience into triumphant, defiant black metal all blastbeats and trem picking in the mid section of this 11 minute epic. The Great Silence is more intelligent black metal that tries to be the antithesis of what can be quite a problematic scene. 8/10
Nothing Thrives - Tales Of Disgrace (Ouga Booga And The Mighty Oug Recordings)
Dirty, snotty rock n roll from the streets of Athens, Nothing Thrives and their debut album Tales Of Disgrace are a band who take no prisoners, signed to the independent label that recently spearheaded the new record from 1000mods, the band who Nothing Thrives opened for at their recent album launch party. Nothing Thrives have a similar snarl but instead of stoner vibes, this is punk n roll inspiring comparisons to Motorhead and Turbonegro (Title Track) but also The Ramones (Out Of Here), The Stooges or MC5.
So it’s got garage rock fuzz, punk rock gang vocal and flashes of solos come towards the end of four on the floor ragers such as Riot. Tales Of Disgrace is a record of raw, live energy from start to finish, even when they slow a little with the swaggering Danzig-like Medicine and the Motorhead-esque Down The Well there’s always some fierce skater punk on Troublemaker Shooting or the punk metal fire of Shallow. Righteous dudes shredding punk n roll riffs, it’s grimy and grizzled dragged from the urban sprawl of Greece’s capital. 7/10
Arysithian Blade - Iriath (Steel Gallery Records)
Formed by some veterans of the Greek metal scene Arysithian Blade are band who are heavily influenced by the William J Tsamis' projects Warlord and Lordian Guard where the US style of power metal was met with a Greek sensibility for "arcane epic metal". The band are singer Chris Papadakis, guitarist and programmer (drums) Giannis Aktypis and bassist Petros Vasiliadis and while I should like this by Crescent Of The Two Moons I was a little bored, the music is quite similar to countless other bands and the vocals were quite one dimensional sitting in the high pitched shrieks and never really doing much else. I usually love epic metal with all its chest beating machismo but I found this blade a bit dull. 5/10
Arysithian Blade - Iriath (Steel Gallery Records)
Formed by some veterans of the Greek metal scene Arysithian Blade are band who are heavily influenced by the William J Tsamis' projects Warlord and Lordian Guard where the US style of power metal was met with a Greek sensibility for "arcane epic metal". The band are singer Chris Papadakis, guitarist and programmer (drums) Giannis Aktypis and bassist Petros Vasiliadis and while I should like this by Crescent Of The Two Moons I was a little bored, the music is quite similar to countless other bands and the vocals were quite one dimensional sitting in the high pitched shrieks and never really doing much else. I usually love epic metal with all its chest beating machismo but I found this blade a bit dull. 5/10
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