proto-metal

These Swedes are celebrating a decade of existence this year, by releasing their fifth outing. Sounding like a less refined version of Enforcer and Ambush, they have a penchant for writing that straightforward, samey, simplistic metal that’s easy to enjoy, but hard to appreciate for more than the cheap thrill it is. The main issue other than the somewhat flat songs, is Andreas Wikström, the singer, who is not terrible, but is a far cry from being great.

Initially I didn’t know what to make of Tanith’s offering. I do like Russ Tippins’s guitar playing, both in the bands he’s been in (ie Satan and Pariah), as well as his solo material… his solo gigs in fact are rather “different” and not as metal and that might in part have given birth to a band like Tanith. With his metal output directed into Satan’s albums, it seems that Tanith is a vehicle for “everything else”. Think copious amounts of Hard Rock, a bit of folk all through a vintage sounding prism.
 

Cyprus’s own Mirror, a band that did comprise of an interesting and international ensemble of musicians, who released a pretty impressive debut on Metal Blade some four years prior, but were unable to capitalize on it being well received, both by the domicile of its members just as much as by how difficult it has become to successfully enter the higher echelons of the metal scene, where most of it is controlled by certain cliques, return seemingly unrepentant, twice as dark as on their debut, with now a purely Cypriot lineup that seems to lend a coupl