Widow "Midnight Strikes" CD
[Tribunal]
This is one of the only real metal releases on Tribunal, and this is real fucking metal. It's not the best thing I've ever heard, I'm mainly not a fan of the vocals (the singing lacks energy and the snarling just makes no sense and sounds generic - i.e. trying very hard to be Tomas Lindberg), but the music is pretty damn good as far as ripping off Iron Maiden and that sort of thing. It's a definite throwback to the 80's, complete with ripping melodic leads, tons of slick dual guitar and vocal harmonies, etc. The first song is called "The Pleasure of Exorcism", so of course they have to go and make it dumb by putting samples of a woman moaning in there and all that goofy shit, but when they drop that crap and just let the metal flow I can dig it. They really need to work on the vocals, though. Because they're really holding back the catchiness of the music. The aggressive vocals are stupid and serve no purpose against the traditional metal riffing, and the singing feels too monotone and held back. He hits the notes fine, but there's no emphasis, so it's pretty tame. The recording is decent, however. My chief complaint is the mix, as all of the tones actually sound fine. I think they just need to kick the bass up a bit and drop the vocals in with the guitars more, but aside from that they're in a strong place. The layout? It stinks. I assume the cover shot of the band members holding their guitars together as they're struck by lightning is supposed to be funny, but it still looks dumb. The rest of the layout is a few band photos and lots of shots of lightning, mostly in black and white, and the lyrics are all done up in some lame looking Halloween font or something. Not that it matters because the lyrics are goofy "storytelling" styled metal lyrics, but still... this thing looks pretty damn silly. I don't know, there's a lot of potential here, but the band needs to clean it up a bit. Fuck the samples, fuck the cheesy "typical metal image", fuck the screaming vocals... just kick the singer in the ass and tell him to put some feeling into it, and start shredding. If they follow those guidelines they could kick some ass instead of just standing around waiting to get up to the plate. (5/10)
Running time - 31:58, Tracks: 8
[Notable tracks: Angel Sin, Empire of Thorns]
Tribunal Records - http://www.tribunalrecords.com

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