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{mosimage}The biggest Brazilian thrash-metal band of the history is back… without any of the Calavera brothers. 

After the departure of the drummer Igor Calavera, added to the one happened years ago by his brother and vocalist Max, it seems that the essence of Sepultura could be lost. Only 2 original members remain, and certainly many fans can feel that this is not the same. Honestly, I think that it would have been wiser just to form another band and forget about using the logo and name of “Sepultura”… but you know how the industry works, the name is still very catchy for millions of followers, although other many million will not pay the minimum attention to the album without any of the Calavera brothers playing in it. 

I have read a few reviews of the album before writing this one, and I share the feeling with many of them: I was not expecting much of it, and in the end I certainly enjoyed it. A-Lex is a conceptual work based on the famous book by Burgess the Clockwork Orange (and more famous movie by the master Stanley Kubrick). The debut of the new drummer, Jean Dolabella, is certainly great and the guy knows what he is doing behind the drum kit. The band sounds consistent, powerful and beautiful and with good lyrics. Another thing I love is that opposite to the trend of most of the bands of releasing shorter albums, here there are no less than 18 delicious tracks to enjoy! Excellent songs like What I do! , the acoustic A-Lex II or Sadistic Values that put Sepultura in the position they deserve. 

If you are able to approach this album with no prejudgments, you can find it certainly a valuable and great album. 

Rating 4/5. 

{mosimage}Under the hand of Spinefarm, the Finnish record company that brings some of the best metal releases all over the world, here comes the new (and acoustic!) album of Ajattara. 

Ajattara is composed by very experienced Finnish musicians that share this project with other bands. So musically, there is no doubt that the playing is going to be skilful. What is surprising is the genre of the album itself, that it could be defined as a kind of acoustic black metal. Yeah, it sounds strange, but true, and the point is that it works. The Finnish guys put a big effort on the instrumental work, with a high presence of different drums and string instruments, and the result is notorious. 

Ajattara is the name of a God of the woods, and certainly the music goes with the flow. Sang in Finnish, the album creates a mystic atmosphere with excellent tracks like Keuhkosi or Saatama palvoo meitä. Maybe the lovers of electric riffs and more hardcore black metal style will not enjoy this, but for those of you who are eager to open their ears to new experiences in the metal world, this release is certainly remarkable. Give it a try! 

Rating 3/5.

{mosimage}Vanity Ink has gained step by step a good name in the Finnish clubs scene with a lot of effort and great skills! 

The Finnish band, formed in 2002, features their second studio album after the release in 2007 of On your skin. One of the most powerful features of the band is the voice and the presence on stage of the charismatic and beautiful female singer, Annabella, who undoubtedly was born to attract the gazes of the audience.  

The band sounds strong, clean, and right. Good doses of rock & roll with no big pretensions rather than entertaining and make you move your feet. Annabella´s vocal skills are good, and the band sounds technically good, I would say that average. 

Maybe that can be also the main problem of the young Finnish, being “average”. It looks like a great band to see live on a small pub or a festival with a glass of beer in your hand, but maybe they lack the charisma and freshness to become bigger and more mainstream. Of course, with only 2 albums, maybe it is a bit too soon to say so, but I have the impression that they won´t pass farther than just being another name in the endless band lists of Finnish summer festivals. Time will tell… 

Rating 3/5.

{mosimage}The Irish boys feature their second full-length album filled with great songs and 100% classic rock! 

I have the chance to meet the guys from the band a couple of years ago before their concert at Tavastia, in Helsinki. They were friendly, and frozen in the Finnish winter. So I was very excited when their follow-up album reached my hands. What you have here is simply classic rock & roll. If you like bands like AC/DC or Led Zepellin, this is the answer to your prays: catchy tunes, catchy riffs, catchy lyrics… catchy everything. If you like more experimental rock, then maybe you could find The Answer a bit boring for your taste.  

Because I love classic rock, I certainly enjoyed this album, but I understand that many people can consider them just a cheap and young version of AC/DC. Maybe for the future, they should try to find a more risky approach to their music. On the other hand, AC/DC have had the same sound for decades, and everybody still love them… so you never know what the best path to follow is. Meanwhile, listen to tracks like Demon Eyes, Too Far Gone or Cry Out and enjoy a taste or Ireland with a good cold Guinness in your hand! 

Rating 4/5

{mosimage}Here is another very interesting young Finnish pop band featuring their debut album 

My First Band is a Finnish band composed by Antti Koivula in the vocals, Heikki Puhakainen in the keyboards, Juho Vehmanen as bass player, Heikki Kytölä on the drums and Mikko Virta as guitarist. With the backing up of a major label as EMI, they firmly step into the pop-rock scene exhaling good quality. Antis’ vocals are really something, catchy, well tuned, and can instantly hook you up.  

The melodies are cleverly composed, intelligent, and easy listening. They have the perfect balance between meaning and light-hearted spirit to reach all kind of audiences, from the lovers of more sad and depressing tunes to the people who just enjoy listening to radio at home while doing other tasks or the ones who can shake their butts at the dance floors of any Finnish pub. We could highlight some excellent tracks in the album like the opening Little White Lies, Broken Day or Why do you treat me so bad. 

A great debut album that confirms once more that Finland is living a golden era in many different musical genres. And we hope that the trend continues for many years! 

Rating 4/5

{mosimage}The one thing that I find difficult when it comes to reviewing a new album is the fact that there’s usually not enough time to really make any proper judgments. Initial reviews of an album can feel rushed and just skim the surface of what only time spent living with that album can reveal. So here comes U2’s latest release, No Line on The Horizon, an album that almost demands repeated listening to fully appreciate its depth and nuance.

No Line on The Horizon is U2’s 12th studio release and catches the band at a bit of a crossroads. Trying to venture forth from the relative safety of their “back-to-basics” approach to song writing of their last two albums, the band is once again in search of a new sound while at the same time trying to retain the core of what makes them quintessentially U2. After scrapping their recording sessions with producer Rick Rubin (whose hands-off style probably didn’t fit well with their new experimental direction), the band enlisted the help of long-time collaborators Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois. This new album – a product of the band’s jam sessions in Fez, Morocco with Eno and Lanois (who share co-writing credits) – chronicles their journey. For much of the album, the band has abandoned traditional song structures and have opted instead to create sonic landscapes and textures grounded by Adam Clayton’s tasteful but driving bass lines. The album mixes Rock, electronica, Jimmy Page-esque guitar riffs, and ambient music along with some Arabic influences thrown in for good measure.

There are more immediate and accessible songs (including the campy Get On Your Boots and Stand Up Comedy) thrust in the middle of No Line on the Horizon, but they almost serve as a counterpoint to the album’s more experimental side. These less accessible songs however, (which include Fez-Being Born, White as Snow, and Cedars of Lebanon), are really the heart of the album; drawing the listener in further each time they’re heard.

No Line on The Horizon is at times somber and contemplative (but never boring) with more than enough compelling moments to make it a journey well worth taking.

U2 will hit the road this year in support of the new album, playing 19 stadium dates in Europe (closest Finland show is Gothenburg, Sweden) followed by more dates in North America in the Fall.

Rating 4/5

{mosimage}The band is certainly not lacking of new material in the last years. Here comes a new CD/DVD recorded in Hong Kong (and other places) to check how the Finnish metal legends sound live!

It does not feel like it was so long time ago, but it has been already  3 years since Tarja Turunen left the band and the Swedish Anette Olzen came to cover her position. So after the turning point of Dark Passion Play, this does not seem like a bad moment to feed the fans with a new live album that explicit explains the continuation of the band after the End of an era, the last concert played by Tarja Turunen and the Finnish fellows in Helsinki.

But honestly, I have the impression that this release is not going to convince to most of the fans. Obviously the hardcore followers will be delighted with a new record, but the material seems maybe not too “fulfilling” to convince people about the purchase. All the live tracks are extracted from Dark Passion Play, 10 songs that sound great, well produced, with good quality and with a nice connection between Olzen and the fans worldwide (the tracks are cut not only in Hong Kong but in different parts of the world, as the co-title of the album explains). But the demo version of Cadence of her last breath feels a bit more like a filler than like a real present for fans, and the DVD does not provide with anything so special apart from the typical backstage scenes, etc in a documentary + 3 video clips that last less than an hour.

Nightwish could have offered more than this, and the question that immediately gets raises is why older songs from the band that are commonly played on live gigs like Nemo or Wish I had an Angel are out of this record.  Trying to avoid comparisons between Turunen and Olzen? We cannot forget that the older material is also an important part of the history of Nightwish, but taking this decision of offering only tracks from the latest album just raises more questions and disappointment among the fans. 

Made in Hong Kong (and in various other places) is undoubtedly a good live album, but a band with such an international top position as Nightwish has could and should have done much better than this. It seems that the shadow of Tarja Turunen keeps giving more than one headache to Mr. Marco Hietala.

Rating 3/5.

Related articles:

Review of Dark Passion Play: http://www.freemagazine.fi/content/view/409/118/

Interview with Tarja Turunen: http://www.freemagazine.fi/content/view/510/117/

{mosimage}From Austria comes this metalcore band with a great follow-up album for the delight of the fans!

The Sorrow is not an unknown band in Finland, They have been playing around in different big summer festivals in the past, and count with a good bunch of followers, although their strongest audiences are still in Germany and Austria. After the great album debut Blessings from a Blackened Sky in 2007, here comes the follow-up work.

What you will find here is quite a “melodic” metalcore. The shouts and heavy riffs are present, but still it is something that most of metal fans can enjoy with no effort. Some highlighted tracks in the album are for my taste Heaven is no place for us or Tempestuous. If you like bands like Killswitch Engage or even In Flames, this can be your cup of tea.

The Sorrow do not really add much new to the genre, neither they are an extra-skilled band. But what they do, they do it well, and their direct style is easy to be enjoyed by metal fans. A decent second studio album for the Austrians! 

Rating 3/5.

{mosimage}The Helsinki-based and Tampere-born young singer features her debut album

First thought that I had when I took a look at Nika´s CD is that it would be another average female Finnish singer with the catchy and easy listening pop-songs that can reach easily teenage audiences. Well, the album is easy to listen, but it is a nice breeze of fresh musical air to listen to the groovy, blues and hip hop rhythms added here.

Not that we have something totally breaking new, but the work is more than good for being the first full length. The catchy track Sovita mua will make you move your feet while other songs are more introspective, narrating the everyday life from the eyes of a young girl, like Hiipuu or the sweet Heikkona hetkenä.

A notable effort for young Nika, who manages to deliver a pretty enjoyable record.

Rating 3/5.

{mosimage}After a couple of years without having new material, the metal band from Lahti provides us with a little masterpiece of new album

Honestly, I hardly knew Profane Omen before this new album fell into my hands, so I had a totally “blank” mind towards what I could find here. And the result has just blown me off.  Starting with the following guitar solo of Williami Kurki in the intro Seconds and followed up by the hammering drums beats of Base, this is a squared album of good heavy metal. Although the work has a good doses of groove metal, it is certainly not difficult to listen to even for the non-extremist metal fans.  The shouts and the most melodic vocal tones in the lyrics are perfectly measured, and certainly the result is powerful, but not too off the hook.  Even the slower "ballad" In the middle I breath puts the top on this metal musical cake.

All in all a great album and a good surprise (I needed this week just to listen to an album exhaling energy like this during the boring office hours). If Profane Omen would be an American band, they would have already broken through international charts, so I just hope they find the right promotion to make their dreams come true.

Rating 5/5.