» “Power Dive” is the second full-length of German VOICES OF DESTINY, two years after the release of their debut (“From The Ashes”).

Their symphonic heavy metal is that one of a more progressive orientation than power metal. As it became usual in this kind of band, the main voice is a soprano female, while a growling male voice sings second vocals. Maike Holzmann plays her part very well, sometimes sounding more angelic than soprano, but in a very controlled way, not hurting our ears. The same I can’t say about Lucas Palme. Contrasts are always a good idea but within certain limits, and that just doesn’t happen here. Not only the harshness in Palme‘s voice is too much, as I believe he has no training whatsoever – he simply gets to the microphone and screams. Yes, we can say it’s yet another contrast with Maike‘s discipline, but personally, I would like the male parts a little bit more polished.

“My Separation” for the first promo-video was the right choice, as it’s one of the strongest tracks, if not the strongest. The instrumental sounds pretty simple, actually, but the musicians “attack” in such a frenzy that for a moment ”black metal” crosses our mind. Maike‘s voice follows a path of its own, different from the tone of the guitars and keys, and I believe that’s what caught my attention – this contrast now is pleasant. In the chorus she engages in the melody, pairing up with it, and I also like the detail of a second voice overlaid, from Maike herself but singing in a different tone.

In the title-track we distinguish the angelic tone I’ve mentioned before, and a more heavy metal music. But the metal in “Kami” and “Your Hands” has a more epic variation. “The Untouchable” has some “happy” keys, while the ones which start up “Dedication” remind us of a tragic symphony. And the softest theme, not being exactly a ballad, we find it in “Being Worth”.

In a whole, it’s an album with quite a potential and, within the genre, a promising band. «

Label: Massacre Records

Producer: Andy Horn

Tracklist:

1. Prologue
2. Power Dive
3. My Separation
4. Dreams Awake
5. Kami
6. The Untouchable
7. Being Worth
8. Dedication
9. Your Hands
10. Red Winter’s Snow I: Prophets Of Doom
11. Power Dive (reprise)
12. Smoke And Mirrors (digipack bonus track)

www.voices-of-destiny.de

» The crowd got a lot more “clustered” for RUSSIAN CIRCLES. There was no more empty spaces in the front and middle lines, as everyone wanted to stand closer to the stage. Only near the exit door it was possible to breathe freely.

Promoting their latest album, “Empros”, they still started off with a track from their debut – “Carpe”, taken from “Enter” (2006).

If the idea of an instrumental concert may sound boring to you, then clearly you don’t know RUSSIAN CIRCLES. The desterity which Mike Sullivan and Brian Cook work the strings and pedals with, and the sharp beat provided by Dave Turncrantz, result in a set of sounds so intense that discards the need for any voice.

From the new album they played “309″, “Batu” and “Mládek”; among the older, “Geneva”, “Harper Lewis” and “Youngblood”; and for the encore they went back to “Enter”, with “Death Rides A Horse”.

It wasn’t at all the band’s first visit to Portugal, and given the enthusiasm of the crowd, they have every reason to be willing to return in the future. «

http://russiancirclesband.com/

» There were several people scattered through the hall and stairs of Hard Club, but nothing that would anticipate the “flood” we would witness that night. DEAFHEAVEN got on stage around 10 p.m. in an almost sold-out venue.

Given the first reaction of the audience, not many were familiar with the sound of the band from San Francisco, but soon the majority let themselves be taken away by the post-rock melodies, with elaborated instrumental parts, and the high-pitched screams, typically black metal, of singer George Clarke.

The setlist was composed by just 4 songs, but the first 3, also the first 3 from the debut album “Roads To Judah” (2011), they sum up some half an hour of playtime.

Clarke spoke only once, to announce the final song, “Exit Denied”, taken from the demo they recorded in the same year they founded the band (2010). He also thanked, and judging by the look in his eyes and the way the crowd welcomed them, it was a sincere “thank you”. «

http://deafheaven.com/

Being a Roland Johansson fan, I’ve known DODGE for some 3 years. But they’ve been around a lot longer (2004) and I’m now proud to present you their debut album.

DODGE’s kind of nu-metal is that more alternative one, their heavy riffs and rhythm being their strongest feature. Along the way, they tap the groove borderline here and there, which results in both aggressive and catchy melodies.

Roland sings mostly clean – as much as that characteristic “edge” of his voice allows him to sing clean. What I mean is that there’s no real growling here. Some angry screams, like in “My Puppeteer” or “Something Better”, a few roaring grumbles, as in “Time”, but it’s mostly Roland’s natural raw tone that brings the lyrics to life and makes the songs unique.  

 “My Puppeteer” (originally released in the demo “Dodgewood”, in late 2005) is probably the heaviest track in “To The End”, as in addition to the angry screams I’ve mentioned before, all instruments sound more frantic than in the rest of the album. But “The Fight” – from the very first demo “Playing The Game” and now turned into first official single –, “Hollywood” and “New Day” (this one with such a distinct bass line) are very close to the same level of frenzy.  

Then, on the opposite end of the tempo scale, there’s “Push It” and “Time”, offering us another kind of heaviness – the weight of “deep emotions”, a little bit trancelike. Not like the slower pace of “Like A Star”, which is simply more melodic.  

Some of the members had already played together in another band, INHALE, which was a mix of nu-metal with hardcore. The talent was there, but we all know how that alone is not enough. So they split up, regrouped as DODGE, but Lady Luck was still nowhere to be found. Crossing my fingers for this third strike to finally pull through.

Label: Despotz Records

Tracklist:

1. New Day
2. Time
3. Hollywood
4. Push It
5. Something Better
6. Like A Star
7. The Fight
8. Where Memories Remain
9. My Puppeteer

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Dodge-FB-official/201979236559470

The “Requiem For The Indifferent European tour” included two dates in Portugal and Heaven Is Not Too Far stole a few minutes from guitarist/singer Mark Jansen before the show in Porto, to know a bit about the new album and the band in general.

HINTF: Hello, Mark. Thank you so much for talking to us.
The title of the new album, “Requiem For The Indifferent”, is a bit hard, a little bit harsh – and also the concept of the album. How did you think about the title? Whose idea was it? And also the cover art, which is something “dark”. Who had all those ideas?

Mark Jansen: Not one person had all the ideas. Simone (Simons, singer) has worked with Heile (Stefan Heilemann, visual artist) on the art for the cover and the booklet and I made the title for the album… and the inspiration for that is all around us.

HINTF: Yes, I’ve read about the culture issues and the wars… Was it something that you’d already planned on doing? Or was there any specific event that triggered that will of alerting people to all this?

Mark: Yes, the specific event was the financial crisis we are in now. People are really suffering from it. The gap between rich and poor is getting only bigger. Two things can happen then: some eye-opener and people start being there for each other, or the other way, that rich people want even more for themselves, even in a crisis situation. And that’s what I see happening. But the big reason I see for that is that all the big companies in the world are ruled by cold-hearted people. They’ve got these positions because in this world we’re living in the system supports being greedy. So the greediest people have the highest positions and you can’t expect them to be there for the others in a time of crisis. So there’s a need for a big change and it won’t come automatically. The only thing I see that could really make a change would be, for example, the money getting valueless from one day to the other. If that happens, people would have to start from the beginning again and build up something new. I can not really hope for that because it would be a really dramatic event, but something like is needed to reset the whole system.

HINTF: “Storm The Sorrow” was chosen as the first single because you believed it was the best song to promote the whole album. But is that your favourite song? To play live?

Mark: My favourite song to play live is “Serenade Of Self-Destruction”. Because this song has all the elements that EPICA represent. I also like songs like “Consign To Oblivion”, “Cry For The Moon”… But from the new album is definitely “Serenade Of Self-Destruction”.

HINTF: And since you’ve talked about it… What was your reaction when you found out that the first physical release of “Requiem For The Indifferent” by Nuclear Blast included an only instrumental version of “Serenade Of Self-Destruction”?

Mark: My stomach turned around, to be honest (laughs). It’s the worst thing that can happen to a musician. You work two years on an album and then somebody fucks it up. But we’re all humans and we forgave the person who made the mistake. We didn’t want to start any more problems. The error was made, you can’t change anything, you only have to find the best possible solution for it. All the fans who wanted the new album could still get the new album from Nuclear Blast and as soon as possible the new cds in the shops had the right version.

HINTF: And the right song was also available for download.

Mark: Exactly!

HINTF: When Yves (Huts, bass player) left the band and Rob (van der Loo) came in, did you even make an audition? Because you announced it almost immediately! You just thought “let’s ask him if he’s interested” or did you audition some other people?

Mark: No. When Yves announced he would leave, the same day I called Rob, because I know him from MAYAN (Mark’s other band). I like Rob a lot, he’s a great guy and also a very talented musician. So there was a consensus right away that he would be the perfect guy to replace Yves. So we called him, he said yes, and there was no need to audition anyone else.

HINTF: It’s been a while since you’ve played indoors in Portugal. How was the concert yesterday in Lisbon and what are your expectations for tonight here in Porto?

Mark: For some reason in this whole tour we are suffering from technical problems – yesterday as well. But we keep on going. Even if someone “up there” (points to the sky) is teasing us for whatever reason, we keep on going. And I think the crowd really appreciated that. And from the half of the set on, the crowd got wilder and wilder and in the end it turned out to be a great show. And I think that’s the right thing to do. If we had got sad by these little technical problems we had then the whole concert would be a waste. But you can always say that it went well from half of the set on, and I think that nobody noticed most of the little technical problems. But this tour, for some reason… everything goes wrong. Let’s see what happens tonight (laughs).

HINTF: Well, I read some comments from people in Lisbon saying the concert yesterday was awesome, so…

Mark: Yeah, and the people really thanked us and I was also really happy with the crowd reaction, really warm and wild. So it was great!

HINTF: The show here isn’t sold out, but it was close (some 700 tickets sold out of 800). So what do you think, it’s going to be good?

Mark: I think yes! Despite whatever technical problems there might be (laughs).

HINTF: Once again thank you and good luck!

Note of the author: if there was any technical problem in the EPICA concert after this interview, I didn’t notice.

» “Karma”, the intro in “Requiem For The Indifferent”, isn’t much longer than one minute and a half, but in concert seemed to me a lot longer. One by one, the members of EPICA took their places on stage and “attacked” “Monopoly On Truth”.

Almost non-stop, they went back to their first full-length, “The Phantom Agony”, with “Sensorium”. The whole concert was a back-and-forth through their discography, obviously with more check-ins at “Requiem…”.

After saying we were “hot” and “steaming”, guitarist/singer Mark Jansen thanked us for allowing them to live from their music – the “thank you” said in our language, as the Portuguese girlfriend of drummer Ariën van Weesenbeek helped him to correct his accent so many times that it became automatic saying it.

Besides the professionalism and sympathy of the musicians, that alone made the concert unforgettable, we also had an excellent light game for a more remarkable visual impact. And new bass player Rob van der Loo, who was forced to stay out of the first gigs of the tour due to health issues, was now back.

Later, Simone Simons said that in those 10 years (not every band achieved that) EPICA had always been welcomed by the Portuguese and that it felt good to be back. She remembered playing in the old Hard Club, “on the other side of the river”, in 2005. And when she asked who else had been there, several arms were raised among the more than 600 people in the venue. She introduced “the last” song, which had also been played back then: “The Phantom Agony”. But there was something different this time: more or less in the middle of the song, the keys suffered a disco-ish remix and the whole band had huge fun jumping and dancing.

Of course it was the last song before the encore, not the very last of the gig. While the crowd screamed for the band and the stage lights were half-lit, a guitar played random riffs, one of them from “our” MOONSPELL – “Alma Matter”.

Keyboard player Coen Janssen was the first one to come back, picking up the mic and saying we weren’t just “a good drink”, we were also “a good audience”. That, as Simone had said, it was great to be back in Porto after “7 thousand years”, in a better Hard Club than the previous one. Personally, I disagree with this comparison, but of course I liked to hear him say that we deserved the best. He promised they’d be back next time, if we promised the same. An explosion of “yeah!” echoed, to which Coen replied that it was a deal.

“Cry For The Moon”, “Unleashed”, a drum solo and “Consign To Oblivion” were the last tracks of a concert that lasted beyond 90 minutes and clearly didn’t let down the most skeptical. «

www.epica.nl

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» With less “baggage” but equal recognition, Dutch STREAM OF PASSION came up next, in a performance that singer Marcela Bovio herself described as “legendary”. Her Mexican origins allowed her to speak almost the whole show in a mix of Portuguese with some Spanish, switching to English only at the farewell to say, like XANDRIA, that they would be at the merch stand waiting for us, at the end of the event.

Although “Darker Days” has been released in June of last year, STREAM OF PASSION‘s setlist was more diversified than their predecessors’, with songs from all three albuns they’ve released so far. They began with “Lost”, continued with “Passion” (from the very first “Embrace The Storm”, with the participation of the acclaimed Arjen Lucassen), going through tracks like “In The End” and RADIOHEAD‘s cover “Street Spirit”, and ending with “This Endless Night”.

Despite the technical problems in Eric Hazebroek guitar, those were 45 minutes of undoubtful quality, where I can let go unmentioned the constant jumps of bassist Johan van Stratum. «

www.streamofpassion.com

» The clock didn’t strike 19:00 yet and the queue for Hard Club’s Room #1 was already beyond Room #2. XANDRIA, with their 15-year-old career, wasn’t just any opening act and there were many who didn’t want to miss a thing, especially when the German band would play for just half an hour. Before the opening of the doors, guitarists Marco Heubaum and Philip Restemeier, in charge of the band’s merchandise, were approached by several fans for photos and autographs.

All six tracks of the short setlist belonged to their latest work, “Neverworld’s End”, except the last one, “Ravenheart” - probably their most popular song, released in 2004.

After the inccident with Nils Middelhauve‘s index finger, whose blood poisoning forced the bass player to undergo two surgeries already, Fabio D’Amore from Austrian SERENITY took hold of the five strings and seemed totally at ease, interacting both with the other musicians and the audience, as if he’s always been in the band.

Philip spoke in a Brazilian Portuguese – which he was completely aware of and therefore apologized – that they would be outside in the end of EPICA‘s gig, if we wanted meet them. Given the way the crowd screamed during and between songs, I’m sure that many did so. «

www.xandria.de

There was a guy who had his birthday on that day (or close to it), so Miguel invited him on stage and made us all sing “Happy Birthday”. Later, he also asked the Roller Derby girls to get up there, ending up extending the invitation to everyone.

When the crowd asked for an encore, I was hoping they would play Carlos Paião cover of “Playback” – it’s been a while since the last time they’ve done it. But I guess Berny never rehearsed it (not even sure if Filipe has), so they played “Suffer No More” again – their “hit single”

www.myspace.com/equaleft

When he first addressed to the audience, he said they weren’t musicians – they were just a bunch of gastronomers who also liked music. The band had some friends in the crowd replying to the jokes, so the concert was held in a very funny and friendly environment.

“Lost Soul” was dedicated to their former singer, Henrique Loureiro, who was there as a photographer.

www.myspace.com/unfoldedvision