Manilla Road at Myspace
Manilla Road’s latest release, Voyager, is a decent effort, if not quite up to the level of some of the band’s previous work. Mark Shelton’s voice isn’t what it used to be; while his nasal delivery was somewhat hard to get into before, I enjoyed it because it sounded like the Monarch [...]

Manilla Road at Myspace
Manilla Road is one of those bands that’s been around forever, but never managed to break into the mainstream in any way despite releasing some great material. Their first album, Invasion, dates all the way back to 1980. The production is about as rough as one would expect from an album self-released [...]

Stormwarrior at Myspace
I love Stormwarrior. They do a great job of producing 80’s style speed metal in a way that’s delightfully cheesy without falling into the outright faggotry embraced by Hot Topic favorites such as Dragonforce. Heading Northe is another fine effort from the band. It’s hard to believe that this is just the third [...]

Dantesco at myspace
Dantesco, Puerto Rico’s premier metal band play a form of epic doom metal not a million miles from Doomsword, Solstice and Solitude Aeturnus. The first thing you will notice is they are all in Spanish and that vocalist Erico La Bestia sings for a good portion of the time in a cod-operatic style [...]

Dio at Myspace
The trend of bands performing entire albums in concert seems to be pretty popular these days (I have Jethro Tull’s “Aqualung Live” and 2 out of 3 of Dream Theater’s “Official Bootleg” series), and Dio continues it with this 2-disc set where every song from “Holy Diver” is performed.
Dio’s voice has its ups [...]