Hellsmoke is a new hard rock band from Helsingborg in Southern Sweden with 2020 being the band's heavy, incendiary and very hard hitting debut. The band began life when guitarist Christofer Dahlman (ex-Alyson Avenue, Bai Bang) and songwriter Torbjörn Månsson' joined forces with drummer Roger Landin (ex-Cloudscape) and their proto-metal built around snarling guitars and..
Squealer – Insanity (Pride & Joy Music)
The German power/thrash metal band Squealer has long been a guaranteed supplier of hard and very heavy metal ever since its inception in the mid '80s with each of their albums being greeted with equal delight by its quite devoted fan base. However, the recorded output is hardly prolific with the publicity stating that this..
Shadow Tribe – Reality Unveiled (Pride & Joy Music)
Shadow Tribe' is a new Finnish power metal band put together by the well established bass player Marko Pukkila (Altaria, Stargazery) and vocalist Kimmo Perämäk (ex-'Celesty', 'Spiritus Mortis', 'Masquerage') with guitarist 'Simo Pirttimaa' and drummer 'Petri Heinonen' ('King Satan') coming in to complete the team. 'Reality Unveiled' is an album two years in the making..
Lazarus Dream – Alive (Pride & Joy Music)
Lazarus Dream Lazarus Dream is a new hard rock project put together by the German pairing of Markus Pfeffer and Carsten Schulz with Alive. Being the debut release featuring thirteen tracks for 72-minutes of superior hard rock very much in Whitesnake's Slip Of The Tongue territory. Markus Pfeffer is a well established multi-instrumentalist and was..
Winter’s Verge – The Ballad Of James Tig (Pride & Joy Music)
I'm not sure how the band Winter's Verge has come to pass me by but it has and just the one listen the The Ballad of James Tig is enough to convince that the band is another totally over the top, majestic symphonic/power metal outfit that demands to be added to your must have list...
Mentalist – Freedom Of Speech (Mentalist Records/Pride & Joy Music)
Mentalist is a new melodic metal band from Saarbrücken, Germany that was formed recently in 2018 which makes Freedom of Speech the band's debut disc. It is a most talented team of musicians that make up Mentalist with Peter Moog on guitar, Tomen Stauch (ex-Blind Guardian) on drums, Kai Stringer (Starchild) on guitars, Florian Hertel on..
Season Of Dreams – My Shelter (Pride & Joy Music)
Season Of Dreams is a new project put together by the French multi-instrumentalist and songwriter Jean-Michel Volz and Swedish vocalist Johannes Nyberg with My Shelter being their debut album. Volz is the guitarist and songwriter for the French heavy rock band A Taste Of Freedom and Nyberg was the singer and keyboard player with Swedish..
Terra Atlantica – Age Of Steam (Pride & Joy Music)
Look at the band name and then the album cover and try to guess the music genre, OK, I just know that everyone screamed power metal and you are absolutely right. The wonder and beauty of power metal is that you know what you are going to get time after time and this is the..
Tina Schüssler – Verwirrte Welt (Pride & Joy Music)
This is a rather interesting hard rock album given that it is from the German singer Tina Schüssler and, I suspect, many of you will be like me and unaware of the name. However, if you are German than you will probably know her as a three-time kick boxing world champion, so would anyone be..
She Bites – Joyride (Pride & Joy Music)
She Bites is the rock vehicle put together in 2019 for Berlin based singer and actress Melanie Stahlkopf by the Lioncage and ex-Skyline guitarist Lars König with the band being completed by drummer Carsten Kohl (Three Wishes) and bassist Arvid Lucas (Lioncage). Together, they have produced Joy Ride, a thoroughly enjoyable pop/AOR album with hooks aplenty..