1. When Darkness Calls
2. Bleed For Me
3. Phantom Road
4. Devil In Disguise
5. Too Late
6. Gate Keeper
7. The Price You Pay
8. Monster
9. Revolution Rising
10. After The Leaves have Fallen
11. Vengeance Is Mine
REVERENCE is an American Heavy/Power metal band featuring members from TOKYO BLADE, SAVATAGE, CRIMSON GLORY, BURNING STARR and FUNNY MONEY. Well, honestly I only know SAVATAGE from that list. The band formed in 2010 in Detroit, Michigan and they are due to debut their first album, “When Darkness Calls” soon. I’ve got a digital copy of this album (lucky me?!) from the band management and now I am glad to explain my experience of REVERENCE ‘s metal for you.
Unfortunately the copy that I have is 96 kbps and 32 khz, as you may know it is not a high quality. I always use Winamp to listen to the music whenever I want to review them. This application gives you the ability to check the ID or information of any songs, I’ve found this option very useful. You just need to right-click on any particular song on the playlist or press ‘ALT and 3’ keys and you will see a table with all the information about the track, if they have them though. If you cannot see any information, just click on the ‘Auto Tag’ button on the right and bottom corner and it will fill in all the tables itself (by luck though). Unfortunately, there was no information for any tracks of this album and auto tag won’t work too as this album is not released yet, this is not the band’s fault though. To have a better listen I set the equalizer to ‘Full Bass and Treble’ mode which may melt your eardrums!
REVERENCE ‘s “When Darkness Calls” is a modern power metal album, however I felt a little 80’s –ish during listening. It is not an extraordinary nor exceptional album, but very energetic. The album starts with the self titled track which is a powerful one. However the intro of this track is not impressive, but after one minute, the power metal starts and you will taste the band’s true metal. I must confess that I am impressed by the vocals. Todd ‘s voice has a wonderful wide range to it, which reminds me of John Sykes and Don Dokken. There are some elements which are common between most of the tracks in this album, fast guitar riffs and solos, however they are not always at the same level. For example the third track, ‘Phantom Road’ is pure American power metal, with guitar riffs which remind me of George Lynch. But on the next track, ‘Devil In Disguise’ you will hear some NWOBHM and fast thrash riffs mixed together which create a good heavy metal feeling.
The fifth track, is the best track. It is named ‘Too Late’ and starts with an awesome fiery intro including ICED EARTH-ish guitar arpeggios and a guitar solo which reminds me of IRON MAIDEN, then come the volcanic riffs spurting flames and METAL. The vocals are wonderful again, as well the chorus parts. The song was written, recorded, mixed and mastered at the highest level, in other words, it has the makings of a masterpiece. In the final part, ‘Too Late’ ends at the point where it started, very clever! Another notable track in this album is “Monster” which sounds like STRATOVARIUS trying to play ICED EARTH. It is very melodical powerful metal, however I found some elements of symphonic metal in it as well. In this album you will even find a HELLOWEEN-ish track which is entitled ‘Revolution Rising’. If you love Pumpkin metal like me, you will love this track too.
In my opinion, the weakest point of this album is the tenth track, ‘After The Leaves Have Fallen’. It starts with an electric guitar arpeggio along with a little echo which doesn’t sound good to me as it is too simple and it is just one theme which repeats. However it could be better if they tried to play this arpeggio with a piano, for example as HELLOWEEN did on the track ‘If I Could Fly’. Also I believe it could be better if the track listing was arranged a little differently, for example this song would be good as the fifth or sixth track to balance it in a better way. As I said before good artists always care about everything, even tiny details. By all means, it is not bad music, you still can enjoy the vocals, guitar solos and bass themes in the background.
As the final word, “When The Darkness Calls” by REVERENCE is a good power metal album full of energy and flames. I recommend listening and rocking with this album to all who know and love the power metal music genre. Also I believe that although the band is not well-known now, they have the potential to be a big name in this genre in the near future. I look forward to hearing more Metal from them at a higher level soon. My rating for this album is 8/10 and I was glad to listen to REVERENCE ‘s debut album, “When The Darkness Calls”.
Metal Shock Finland‘s Chief Editor Mohsen Fayyazi recently conducted an interview with the legendary Blaze Bayley for the Middle Eastern webzine Jorzine. An excerpt from the interview can be read below:
Jorzine: You’re going to play a show in Dubai on 31st of May, how do you feel about it? Have you been here in the Middle East before?
Blaze: I’m very excited about going back to Dubai as I started my professional career there, we were a house band in a hotel.
It was WOLFSBANE, our first professional engagement. We learnt lots of cover versions and the money we made from that was enough to to do our first demo of original material, and that’s what started everything for us.
That was a long time ago and I’m really interested to see how Dubai has changed. I have really fond memories of when I was there the first time. I’m really looking forward to it, I don’t know how many fans I’ve got in that area, but I’m so pleased to be able to go. The acoustic show has been going down great across Europe and South America, so I’m very excited to bring it to Dubai.
When asked how the job came about, Blaze stated “It was a 3 month contract, but we got sacked after the first month, because we were too heavy metal, we played the songs too fast. But we saved enough to do our own original demo. That got us our first agent and our first article in Kerrang! And that’s what got us noticed by Def American Records.
Jorzine:You were a part of Iron Maiden, I’d like to know how your current relationship is with them and also their ex-members, I know you are good friends with Paul Dianno but I’d like to know how are you doing for example with Steve or Bruce?
Blaze: I knew Bruce for many years before I joined Iron Maiden. I met him many years before in New York and we got on quite well. He supported me in my solo career when he had his radio show on the BBC, he had me on for an interview and played my songs regularly. I’m not in touch with him a lot, but he’s been very supportive of me.
I’m still in touch with Steve Harris occasionally and I did part of the work on the King Of Metal album at Steve Harris’s studio.
I’m very proud of the music we did and I learnt so much when I was writing and recording with Iron Maiden, and so much about performing live from Steve Harris.
You can listen to the whole of the interview on the Soundcloud player below:
There are a lot of ways to know about what’s happening in the world, you can follow the news on TV, radios or you can read your daily newspaper but today the faster way to keep yourselves up to date is by connecting to the internet and following the news on websites which post fresh news. In fact, the internet and online magazines are ahead of the game today, and it seems TV and printed magazines are losing out to them.
Bravewords.com is one of the best websites which has posted the latest news about rock and metal music for the last 13 years. They seem to be awake all the time, as their website is always up to date with lots of fresh news. Metal Shock Finland‘s Chief Editor, Mohsen Fayyazi, has recently conducted an interview with Tim Henderson, CEO and Founder of BW&BK.
When asked about how he sees the future for online magazines, Tim said:
“Well, there’s a couple of ways to go – I have a website that you’re changing content all the time, or I have people that continue to pitch me that they want an online magazine.
All that kind of content doesn’t change, whether you’re laying it out on a piece of paper or you have an online magazine.
So in the next ten years, it’s going to have to be the cream of the crop. It’s the old school people, you can’t tell me that kids these days that are holding their iphones and their ipads, that they want to hold a magazine. There’s no way.
You look at the gimmicks they’re sometimes using, like “Decibel” have a flexi disc, “Classic Rock” bring in actual CD compilations or putting in T shirts, which is great for them. I just don’t know how long that will last.“
Also Tim stated the following during the interview:
“All I can say is there’s better things yet to come for Bravewords in 2013 and that’s all I will say.
Lots of surprises this year. Thirteen is one of my lucky numbers, so let’s hope that this year’s lucky!“
You can listen to the whole of the interview on the player below:
Power metallers GAMMA RAY have released a teaser trailer via their official facebook page, for the new EP “Master Of Confusion,” which is due for release on March 15th via earMusic.
Check out the trailer below:
Metal Shock Finland‘s Chief Editor, Mohsen Fayyazi recently reviewed “Master Of Confusion” which can be read at this location.
DESTINY is a Swedish heavy metal band formed in 1982 by bassist Stefan Björnshög. The band have released six studio albums up to now and have changed the line up many times.
I, Mohsen Fayyazi, am really interested about the metal scene in Scandinavia, and I found DESTINY’s music to be great. So I contacted Stefan for an interview about a year ago. As you will find some of these questions out of date, it is because I wrote them about a year ago. Unfortunately as you will read, Stefan faced a tragic event and some problems which resulted in a delay with his answers.
Hello Stefan, How are you doing today? It seems people play METAL so loud in Sweden, don’t they?
Hi Mohsen.
I have not been doing all that good most of the time since you sent me these questions. On the 17:th of January 2012 my fiancé Therese Hanserot, whom also was the original singer in Destiny, passed away. She was my soul mate and we planned to get married, but now she’s gone and I’m devastated. I did not talk to anybody for almost six months since it happened, except through facebook. Being with my kids was my salvation, when they where around I could handle the situation. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do, not even if I wanted to go on with Destiny, or even if I wanted to play music at all again. After a couple of months I finally picked up my bass again. It was hard in the beginning, but after a while I realized that playing kept away the most painful thoughts. I tried to play at least a couple of hours a day.
About playing Metal loud in Sweden… I never really thought about that…
Let’s talk about your 30th-anniversary album first, “The Incompatibility Of Philosophical Terminology”, how is the recording process going?
Well, as you probably understand, the recording came to an abrupt halt. I was going to record the bass but I couldn’t handle it. In the beginning of April I finally started to record the bass. All the drums weere already completed. We had to get a session drummer, the very talented Adde Larson (M.A.N and Black Candy Store) to keep the recording schedule. I’m very happy with his work and I highly recommend him to anyone who needs a fast working skilled session drummer.
Anyway, when the bass finally was recorded we continued with the guitars. The plan was to have as many old Destiny members as possible to guest on the album. Therese was going to be on it but that will unfortunately not happen now. So far Janne Ekberg, Anders Fagerstrand (Futureof the past), Knut Hassel (The Undiscovered Country) and John Prodén (Beyond All Sense) have agreed to participate. Magnus Österman (Beyond All Sense) and Gunnar Kindberg (Nothing Left To Fear) have declined as they don’t play guitar any more, but I haven’t given up on them quite yet…
Knut Hassel was actually in the studio with us the second of January and recorded guitar for four songs and it sounds great.
I like the artwork of this album but would you tell me who created it for you?
The name of the album is really great and made me think a lot, would you tell me more about it and also about the album itself? What kind of style will it be and what kind of material will it consist of, new songs or re-recorded? And are you able to give us a certain date for releasing?
Well, as you probably understand the original time schedule completely failed. The plan now is to release a digital single in February 2013 and for the full album to be released in spring of 2013. The album will feature 14 songs. Nine of them are rerecording’s from past albums. Six of them are from “Nothing Left to Fear” and one each from “Atomic Winter”, “The Undiscovered Country” and “Future of the Past.” There will also be new recordings of five old Destiny songs that were never released on any album before, but that have been played live in the past. The earliest song is from 1983 when Therese was still the singer in the band. The other four songs were originally meant for a second album. All these songs are much too good to be forgotten and will fit perfectly on the anniversary album.
Are you recording the songs without a singer? Or do you now have a vocalist with the band?
We have a new vocalist. His name is Jonas Heidgert, he has recorded five albums with Dragonland before he joined Destiny. He is a very nice person and an excellent singer that fits Destiny’s music perfectly. He will sing on all the songs of the Anniversary album. He has already recorded one song, the single, and it sounds amazing. We will record the rest of both the vocals and the guitars track by track during the first months of 2013.
We also have a new drummer, Roger Christiansson, but as all the drums are already recorded, he will probably only rerecord the drums for one of the songs on the album.
Roger and I have been friends for about 25 years but we have never played together before.
Another exiting development for Destiny is that we now have a keyboard player in the band, Carl Dalberg, whom joined Destiny in the beginning of 2013. Originally he was just going to guest on the album, but as we always wanted a keyboard player in the band I asked him to join, which he happily accepted.
Destiny previously announced that the new CD, “Global Warming”, is still under production but is temporarily put on hold and will be made available at a later date. Can you tell us more about this album? Especially who is on vocals and if there was were any guest musicians during the recording process.
The album has been mostly recorded for some time now; all but the vocals and some additional instruments are completed. There are several reasons for the delay but of course the main reason has been that it took so long to find the right vocalist. Jonas Heidgert will of course be singing on all of the songs on the album. As far as any guest musicians goes there are no plans for that at this stage, but you never know. The album consists of nine new songs, that I wrote the music for some years ago. No lyrics are completed at this stage. As always the album doesn’t sound like any of the previous albums, even though it still sounds very much like a Destiny album. I think it’s our strongest album so far. We are all very excited to complete it and release it, not to mention playing the songs live.
And when do you think the album will be ready for release?
The plan is to release it in January 2014, but it could be earlier even though I doubt it…
I’d like to know your opinion about the Global Warming issue, many scientists and people think we have trouble ahead, we seem to be doomed by ourselves – we cut the trees, infect the seas and oceans …. what do you think we can do and what is/ are Destiny’s suggestion(s)?
When we released Atomic Winter, a nuclear war was what most people feared. The atomic winter was what survivors from such a war could expect. Today the Global Warming is an even bigger threat, so we thought that it would be a fitting title for the new album.
I think that most people, including governments and business people, are living in denial. I think that it’s almost too late to act and therefore this is the biggest threat to mankind ever. The Earth will survive but mankind might not. I don’t have any easy solutions other than that we have to stop poisoning the earth, no matter what and to achieve that the richer countries will have to sacrifice a lot more than they are willing. There are scientists that can tell us what to do, but as long as people are unwilling to recognize the threat and listen I’m afraid I don’t see a very bright future for our children. The best we can do is to make as many people as possible aware of the situation.
The band has released several albums, one of which includes a tribute for the legendary Yngwie Malmsteen, “A Guitar Odyssey”. I’d like to know more about this album and can you tell us if you met and had a talk with Yngwie before or after the releasing of that album?
It’s a tribute album which features different bands covering Yngwie songs. It was released by the same label that released The Undiscovered Country. The original reason for us to be on that album was that our then guitarist Knut Hassel was an extremely fast player and he used to be very influenced by Yngwie before he joined Destiny. Unfortunately, he left the band before the recording begun so we decided to do a quite different, heavier, more Destiny version than we had originally planned.
I have never met Yngwie, but I have a lot of friends that know him. One of them told me that he thought that our version of the song “Anguish and Fear” was too slow. This was also our first recording in our own studio, we could probably do a much better job today. Especially the mixing wasn’t as good as I would like it to be. We we also recorded another song, Into the Nightmare, for a Demon tribute album at that same time which was much better.
Me personally and perhaps many of our readers would like to know more about your upcoming shows, would you tell us more details?
We have not planned our new shows in detail yet, but we will have some new stage equipment and we will play songs from every album, as it’s our 30th anniversary. The plan is to film a full concert at the end of 2013 to document the anniversary.
How do you see Destiny in next 10 years, still active and playing loud Metal?
I don’t see an end to Destiny for a long time, but I’m also old enough to know that you can’t predict the future. We are still creative and have lots of good music in us, especially with this new great line up. I’m sure that we will at least do one more studio album after the release of Global Warming. Our best years are still ahead of us and the future of Destiny should be brighter than the past.
Thanks Stefan for giving me your time, as your final word feel free to leave a message here for Destiny’s fans and our readers.
Well, as Destiny might be a new band to some of your readers I invite them to visit our homepage. http://www.destinymetal.com. Apart from lots of information about the band there is also a music player featuring songs from all Destiny albums. At the moment none of the Destiny albums are available as downloads or on Spotify and so on. We are actually about to change that real soon, but until then our homepage is the best place to go if you are curious about the music of Destiny. You can also interact directly with the band via our facebook page. Finally, hope to see you on the road in 2013!
Legendary German guitarist Wolf Hoffmann (ACCEPT) has recently unveiled his new signature guitar. It is a 6 string guitar which has been developed and manufactured according to his needs by Framus.
Wolf has recently joined Mohsen Fayyazi‘s Burning Crown to describe his new guitar in more details.
He described his new guitar as follows:
“It’s the best guitar I’ve ever owned. When I opened the case for the first time I was just blown away. Framus have done such a beautiful job that I’m speechless. The paint job on this particular guitar resembles a vintage WW2 bomber – hence the name “Flying Fortress” – it has aluminum paint with real rivets and bomber decals . This guitar is the ultimate war machine !! The idea behind this Flying V is that it’s a cross between a V and a Strat. It obviously has the traditional V shape but there are many Strat features also. First of all the (maple)body is contoured so it is much more comfortable to play, then there is a Titanium Floyd System by Floyd Upgrades, EMG pickups (81in the bridge and a single coil SA in the neck position.) Also check out the cool headstock design, the tiger striped ebony fingerboard with mother of pearl inlays and Invisible Fret Technology and also the neck – through construction. To me, in terms of the craftsmanship and quality nobody today can touch Framus Guitars !!” Wolf continued describing “Germans make good stuff, everybody knows that. They make the best cars, they make really good microphones.“
When Wolf was asked about how he found out about Framus and why he chose them, he said:
“I’ve been in touch with Framus for about a year about this new guitar. We were first in touch about 2 years ago about possibly doing a signature guitar. They finally had a prototype ready for me in the fall on this last tour. So I have been using Framus guitars on this last tour exclusively. you know it’s just one of those things, and when they decided to make a signature for me I was very very excited, because I know they make the best guitars in the world.”
Wolf stated about his upcoming solo album:
“I’ve actually started work on new follow up material already, so hopefully it won’t be long before I can release it.“
You can listen to the whole of the interview below:
Kimmo Kuusniemi’s ASA unveil the long-overdue release of "Collective Failure" + first music video for title-track! Check it out and stay tuned for more news! Click image to watch the video
Kimmo Kuusniemi’s SARCOFAGUS return with a Historic 2010 Concert Video Premiere on YouTube! Click image to watch the video
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Review by Mohsen Fayyazi
Hi Mohsen.
Legendary German guitarist Wolf Hoffmann (ACCEPT) has recently unveiled his new signature guitar. It is a 6 string guitar which has been developed and manufactured according to his needs by Framus.
Click image to watch the video
Metal Shock Finland (World Assault ) 