Magma Soul - Sacred Fire (2024)

Country: Mexico
Style: Hard Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 19 Mar 2024
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | YouTube

Here's a fascinating band who don't come from Spain, as they were presented to me, but instead from Mexico City, Mexico. They do start out in Spanish, the first three tracks performed that way, but then they switch to English for the rest of the album, including English language versions of a couple of those opening three, only La Puerta Falsa here only in Spanish. That seems odd, but it's not the oddest thing about the album, because they're all over the musical map, enough so that very few songs can be compared to each other.

That starts out feeling a little offputting but settles quickly, until this starts to seem like a covers album featuring all the songs that the band were influenced the most by, only where none of the songs are actually covers, even those three opening songs in Spanish.

La Puerto Falsa is a solid stomper, a punchy piece set up by Alexis Mendoza's able bass. Paraiso is an alternative rock ballad except for when it isn't. There's Beatles-like poppy punctuation behind the verses but it heavies up so that Alejandro Cuadros can deliver a searing guitar solo while the rest of the band stubbornly refuses to up their energy to match his. Talk about a moment for him in the spotlight! El Poder has a jiggy dance feel, but it's a hard rock song, rather like Jet covering Runrig. Vocalist Rob Rodriguez gets some real attitude into his delivery that's not as effective on the English language version.

So that's three completely different rock songs, at which point they shift into English to continue to shake up any expectations we might have left. The Other Side kicks off with southern rock slide guitar and adds seventies organ, but ends up in modern alt rock territory. You Get What You Give stays southern, even without the slide, to sound more like the Black Crowes. Woman is a funkier take on Bad Company, with yet another blistering guitar solo. There's a third on Beyond the Sun, even though it's otherwise a grungy Scorpions-esque song and, beyond the sheer versatility that pervades the album, it's those solos that work best for me.

Again on My Own and Stardust are both alt rock, but the former sounds like it belongs back in the eighties, a bouncy pop rock song with Blondie verses against Police ska guitar and then Jet in the chorus, while the latter is clearly far more nineties, with a grungier outlook. After that, they shift back to the seventies. In Rock We Trust is underpinned with seventies organ in the Jon Lord style but it unfolds more as a glam rock song, almost like the Sweet covering Y&T covering Deep Purple. The Messenger 2.0 is purer glam rock but with a heavier alt rock backdrop and some urgency right out of early Iron Maiden.

I should add that Higher Power is El Poder sung in English—apparently the higher power is love, in case you were wondering, which I'm not going to argue with—and Paradise is the English language version of Paraiso, of course. But that said, I've run through all these songs and you're imagining that Magma Soul sound just like a dozen completely different bands. Which they do but that isn't at all helpful in the grand scheme of things. I'm imagining a festival in Mexico where Magma Soul serve as the entire line-up, playing a dozen sets in a dozen different ways, so meeting everyone's tastes at some point or other.

Of course, that also means that my favourite song would be similarly meaningless and would likely change with every listen. Right now, I'd throw out In Rock We Trust and Beyond the Sun, but that'll change tomorrow, I'm sure, and I'll be right then too. You—yes, you reading this—could pick a pair of completely different songs that fit your tastes and you'd be right as well. And that means that they're going to be one of the most fun bands to stumble into a club and hear in Mexico City, but I think they'll need to carve out an actual sound of their own to shift much further beyond that, one that can draw from all these influences but in parallel rather than in serial. I'm looking forward to hearing them grow.

Electric Mountain - Valley Giant (2022)

Country: Mexico
Style: Stoner Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 27 May 2022
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram

Of all the genres I've dived into since birthing Apocalypse Later Music in 2018, stoner rock is surely the freshest, mostly because I wasn't paying attention when it was born and missed out on all the early years. Nowadays, it's a truly global genre, not just one confined to the American southwest, and here's a great example of a stoner rock band from south of the border (and there are enough of these for some quick research to turn up Fuzztlán, a blog dedicated to them). Electric Mountain hail from Mexico City and, as is so often the case with such bands, they're a power trio, featuring Gibran Pérez on guitar and vocals, Jorge Trejo on bass and Max Cabrera on drums. This is a follow up to their self-titled debut in 2017.

For the most part, it's exactly what I expected. Stoner rock's twin sister, psychedelic rock, can go in a whole slew of different directions, but stoner rock mostly slides along a scale, softening up to be desert rock or heavying up to be doom or sludge metal. Electric Mountain are right in the middle of that scale, built out of chunky riffs reminiscent of Black Sabbath and blistering solos that take over enough that we often forget that one of these three musicians also sings. They're also fierce and energetic, whether they're rocking out up tempo or slowing down for effect.

What tends to vary the most in stoner rock is the amount of fuzz on the guitar and I'd suggest that Perez's sits midway between clean and crazy distorted, so perhaps 4 or 5/10 fuzzy, even though the intro oddly ramps it up further as a hint of what's not to come. The fuzz is certainly there to leave us in no doubt about what Electric Mountain are playing, but it doesn't overwhelm the sound like a fungus exuding through our speakers.

The other common thread that I see a lot in stoner rock bands is a focus on instrumental jams over vocal content. Many ditch the singer entirely and those that retain one often task him with double duty, noting that his instrumental job clearly far more important than the delivery of lyrics. Many stoner rock singers only seem to be such because they drew a short straw, no-one else in the band willing to step up. Electric Mountain do have a singer but, while he's clearly playing an instrument as well and he does probably see that as the more important role, he cares about crafting a vocal performance too and he does a pretty strong job with it, especially so for the genre.

That said, while I like his delivery, it often surprises me when he steps up to the mike, especially on repeat listens when I get to a favourite track I could have sworn was entirely instrumental, such as A Fistful of Grass. This one's actually only instrumental during its last third, but the band find such a sweet spot during that part that I forget every time. There's only one instrumental here, which is a real journey, A Thousand Miles High also being nine minutes long and always inventive. When it fades out, I'm always surprised, because it remains fresh, even at double the length of anything else here, and could easily have run on longer. Also, while this band lives on its riffs and solos, I got a real kick out of the bass on this one.

By the way, I said for the most part earlier, because there's a song here called At Least Everything that doesn't fit any of the descriptions I've just run through. Of all things, it's an acoustic piece, so inherently shorn of the amped up energy that everything else here thrives on, but it's a real song not an interlude. It's surprising to hear it on this album at all, but it's even more surprising for the position it holds, slotted into the track list partway through, eight tracks in, with a couple more to go. It's not a bad song, but it feels out of place here and would have worked better as an oddity at the end of the album, if not on a B-side later. There's enough music here for its absence not to be a problem.

So, that one anomaly aside, this is yet another solid stoner rock album, merely one from south of the border for a change. I've heard psychedelic rock from Mexico before, courtesy of SixSuns and Saturno Grooves, but this is the most traditional stoner rock I've heard yet and I'd certainly like to hear more.

Young Lust - Alright (2020)

Country: Mexico
Style: Hard Rock
Rating: 6/10
Release Date: 10 Apr 2020
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Twitter

Given that they released Alright as a single a couple of years ago, it's odd to see Young Lust have it lead off such a short album in 2020. I presume the last two years carry some history for the band but I have no idea what that might be. Whatever the reasons, this album features only seven tracks and so runs three minutes shorter than Reign in Blood, my go to yardstick for short albums.

Alright forgives some of that by being such a lively single. It, like Young Lust generally, is hard rock with a hint of sleaze, and it strongly reminds of early Girlschool, just with different accents on the vocals. The band are from Monterrey in Mexico, a couple of hours from the Texas border, although they sing in English. Perhaps not coincidentally, they would also be an all female band, if not for the presence of Peter Reyes on lead guitar.

He's good and his and Mayra Benavides's guitars are a good reason why songs like Alright and Tennessee are so bouncy. The jaunty beats of Alo Gzz are an important factor too and it's telling that the less jaunty she gets, the less interesting the song becomes. Prayer in Vain really drags, for instance, but the very moment her cymbals and Caro Lara's bass start in on Tennessee, we find ourselves already perked right back up again.

The focal point for this band, though, is Mavi Azul, whose name hints at an influence from the Runaways too, which makes sense given the way the chorus on Alright sounds, though this is generally rooted in early eighties NWOBHM far more than seventies glam rock. They also feel more like a band, whatever gender its members are, than a product manufactured with sex appeal. Azul's vocals are more nasal than those of Kim McAuliffe, or Cherie Currie for that matter, but they sound good anyway, especially on those more up tempo songs.

And that's the big lesson here. When Young Lust try to be a commercial hard rock band livening up a small club after the previous band let the audience down, they're more than up to the task. I'd certainly be down the front for adrenaline shots like Alright and Tennessee and I'd hang around for some of the other lively songs too, like Until I Find My Revenge and Let Me See You too. Rebel Heart really gets going halfway through and blisters like nothing else here. An album full of songs like these would be a lot of fun.

However, when Young Lust ditch the party vibe and try to be serious, like on Prayer in Vain, the mood vanishes completely. They just aren't that sort of band and I hope they're not seeing this song as the heart of the album. As a line at the beginning of Rebel Heart goes, "Sometimes you have to go crazy to remember who you really are." That's good advice for this band, because a song like Prayer in Vain turns them into that previous band on the club bill who let the audience down and needed Young Lust to liven things back up.

And here's where I'd talk about the second half of the album, but there just isn't one. I hope the band are treating this as a generous mini-album and a full length studio effort will come later. After all, with the exception of the one down track, the worst thing about this is the fact that it wraps up so quickly. In a way, that's a compliment as much a criticism. I hope I get to hear more from this band soon.

Saturno Grooves - Cosmic Echoes (2020)

Country: Mexico
Style: Psychedelic Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 2 Mar 2020
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter

So I was stuck in the front room waiting for a package trying not to listen to the awful Mexican music being played at high volume inside the house over the street. I figured the best thing to do would be to play some really good Mexican music at high volume inside my house and Saturno Grooves did the job wonderfully.

They're a trio who hail from Durango and play instrumental psychedelic rock, that's equally effective soft and heavy. They start out with the latter and Fire Dome is a real highlight here. Initially hinting at being an old school Black Sabbath song, it promptly kicks into high gear becoming reminiscent of more modern stoner rock bands. José Peyro's guitar wails wonderfully and the mellow bass of Oscar Cisneros rumbles along like a lead instrument under the watchful and relentless pace set by Adolfo Solis's drums.

Having demonstrated that they can effortlessly rock the place, they promptly slow down. The first couple of minutes of Forever Zero are filled with just bass and drums, but it sounds fully formed. When Peyro eventually joins in, his guitar isn't a missing element, it's a whole new dimension to the sound. I should add that there are also vocals here, albeit not in traditional form and not for long. Nobody sings anything; someone merely recites a poem deep in the mix, so deep that I wondered if it was actually part of the song or I was so lost in the music that I wasn't hearing the delivery driver outside.

The band mix up their textures very well. Cosmic Echoes starts out abrasive before moving back into traditional Sabbath territory a couple of minutes in and jamming gloriously. The riff is a good one but it's incessant, as if the band want us to be hypnotised by it. I was paying more attention to the bass because Cisneros is high enough in the mix that I was able to just focus on what he's doing, which is fantastic. Even though the spoken word poem behind this song is easier to hear, I just couldn't pay attention to it.

Saturno Grooves's Bandcamp page suggests that these songs are compositions based on improvisations. I presume that means that they jammed for a while, found what worked and gave it a fresh runthrough in the studio. That makes a lot of sense, because this all runs free and loose but somehow manages to be structured and coherent. There are points where it seems like there are two guitars, but only Peyro is credited, so these songs presumably weren't live takes. I wonder how much work they had to do in the studio and how much was done before they showed up.

With the vocal work doing little for me, except on the atmospheric acoustic number, Blind Faith, where it's treated very differently, it really isn't a surprise to find my favourite tracks were instrumentals. The best of them is Celestial Tunnel, a seven minute journey that just flows gorgeously, easily as cosmic as this album gets and without any space rock effects (though what may be an organ does show up at points). On occasions it even turns playful with a sort of call and response between guitar and bass.

The remaining couple of tracks are comparatively short and mostly serve as a contrast to wrap things up. Blind Faith is soft, like floating clouds, while Dark Matter is volatile like churning earth. The band really thrash it up on this one, with Cisneros's bass getting really angry. These do add texture to the album, but feel just a little apart from it. The heart of the album lies in the the seven or eight minute jams, which means the able trio of Forever Zero, Cosmic Echoes and Celestial Tunnel.

This looks like a second full length album for Saturno Grooves, with EPs and singles earlier on. I'm interested to hear how they sound, after enjoying an impressive range here on only six tracks.

Cabrakaän - Cem Anahuac My Home (2019)

Country: Canada
Style: Folk Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 27 Aug 2019
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | Twitter | YouTube

My previous pair of reviews were of melodic death metal and symphonic metal. In some ways, this Mexican album from Canada is a surprising combination of the two. The band were founded in Toluca, just west of Mexico City, back in 2012 but they're based nowadays in Calgary, Alberta, an odd choice given how overtly Mexican they are. Apparently, they played the Metalocalypstick Festival in Lone Butte, BC in 2017 and loved the place so much they moved north. By the way, I love that festival name!

Cabrakaän sing about Mesoamerican myth and folklore, include instrumentation from pre-Hispanic times and use imagery from that era as well. Just look at the hummingbird on the album cover. The Mayans saw the hummingbird as the animal that transported wishes and thoughts, the Aztecs saw it as immortal and the Zapotecs put it in charge of drinking sacrificial blood. I believe the band are referencing it as the Aztec god of war and protector of all warriors. A song on the album, Huitzilin, is the Náhuatl name of this god.

I've seen the band described in a number of ways, but folk metal is the one that rings truest, because there are a lot of sounds here and some songs are quite clearly based on folk melodies. I don't know if the melody on La Bruja is a traditional one or a new one written by the band, but it sounds like it could be hundreds of years old. There are a few languages used here, English and Spanish being but two. Cem Anahuac in the album's title is Náhuatl for "land surrounded by water" and it's what the Aztecs named their land in pre-Hispanic times.

Songs like the title track start out folk metal, but they evolve. The vocals are generally clean, courtesy of versatile lead singer Pat Cuikäni, but they are often accompanied by harsh vocals from drummer Marko Cipäktli, often but not always in sections where the guitars ramp up to a death metal level. It has to be said that, even when they do, they're lower in the mix than either the keyboards or a variety of instruments that wouldn't be usually expected to sit above the guitars, like maracas.

The symphonic side comes from Cuikäni being so versatile. She's generally in a pretty standard rock mode, but she shifts whenever the song needs it. On a song like Burning Flame, her vocal is the traditional part, sounding like an early eighties heavy metal singer, at least until the end. On La Bruja, she moves to folk mode, as if she's a travelling minstrel. On Huitzilin, she's a symphonic metal singer and, on the title track, a few sections see her shift into outright operatic style.

Cuikäni is the most obvious reason to pick this up, but it's worth listening to for other reasons, especially the variety, which is often on display even within individual songs. I'm not sure what instruments I'm listening to as The Eagle and the Snake begins, but it's very western. It's very cinematic too and I could almost follow the journey south, as if it started in desert territory and ended up in the mountains. A lot of this is cinematic and it's fair to say that I saw almost as much of this album as I heard.

I'm fascinated to discover just what the Canadians way up there in the frozen wastes of the north are making of their local Mexican transplants. As far as I can tell, they're having a blast up there and finding new fans at each new gig. I'd call myself a fan too, though more of the folkier material than the more traditional songs. Calm in My Storm is done as well as La Bruja, but it would be the latter for me every time.

Coventrate - Roots of All Evil (2019)

Country: Mexico
Style: Thrash Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 27 Mar 2019
Sites: Facebook | Metal Archives | YouTube

I wondered which order I should put today's two bands from Mexico. SixSuns take us to new places but Coventrate, from Monterrey (not to be confused with Coventry from Ciudad Juárez), clean us out. In the end, I thought I'd explore the cosmos first and then return to the pit for some old school thrash and leave the day pleasantly exhausted. This is the second full length album for Coventrate, after 2015's Cannon Fodder and an EP in 2017 called Rat King, both of which I shall now eagerly seek out.

This is thrash how I like it best. It's fast and it's frenetic, of course, and it gives our necks a good workout. It's technically proficient and very well produced, with Leo Uvalle's bass audible and the drums not overdone. Michael X, who debuts here for Coventrate, has a clean voice with a rough edge and a periodic falsetto scream to stamp emphasis on proceedings. The album also plays very consistently indeed. I knew on the first listen that the opener, Thrashing of the People, would be a highlight, but Apocriphal Dream promptly outdoes it one further track in. That's a good problem for a band to have.

Most importantly of all, the escalations are great. The best thrash albums are aware of what speed metal did best, taking us from zero to crazy on the turn of a dime, just a little looser and wilder. There's plenty here that's right out of speed metal and, when they slow down, the intricate weaving of guitars that we expect from Iron Maiden. There's a great example of that on M.O.A.B. (Mother of All Bombs) before it escalates into high gear.

For sheer heads down no nonsense thrash, Brainless Consumer is a peach. It doesn't do anything fancy, just blisters for three and a half minutes until it's done and we're onto Speed Metal Command, which does much of the same. It does leave some room for a solo, which rocks, but I think my favourite solos here are on The Dictator and Distopic Paradise. The two guitarists are Pedro King and Ramon Fraustro and their bandmates know exactly how to kick in and out around the solos perfectly.

After highlighting that there are no bad songs here, I should also mention that not everything's perfect. M.O.A.B. quietens down for a finale but then just ends as if most of the band were already done and one guitarist hadn't noticed yet. There are some spoken word parts, like the one at the start of the title track and midway through M.O.A.B., that are lost behind the music and serve little purpose.

Also, I have no idea what the band's previous vocalists sounded like, and it looks like there have been quite a few of them since Ruso Talavera left in 2017, but Michael X is pretty traditional in what he does. I do like how he sounds and I can almost see him stalking the stage live, head back for the screams, but he's traditional enough to fade into the music a little, which stands out above him.

What it boils down to is that I enjoyed Coventrate when he was singing but I think I enjoyed them even more when he wasn't. The band are very tight and I lost myself in some of the more extended instrumental sections, like during the title track. Instrumentally, they reminded me of early Death Angel, who do not show up on the 'Artists We Also Like' section of their Facebook page. Slayer, Destruction and Municipal Waste do, alongside other more surprising acts like Uriah Heep and Danzig. I'm not hearing them here.

What I'd like to do, beyond seeking out Coventrate's earlier work, is to see them live. They sound like they ought to absolutely blister on stage. Maybe they'll wander far enough north at some point for me to get a chance to see them.

SixSuns - Cycles (2019)

Country: Mexico
Style: Psychedelic Blues Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 16 May 2019
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook

Yesterday, I reviewed a couple of albums from Peruvian bands and I'm moving virtually north to Mexico for a couple more very different outfits today. It may be hard to describe SixSuns, who hail from Ecatepec de Morelos outside Mexico City, because they freely admit that "ninguna de las composiciones suena al mismo género", which means that their songs are often from utterly different genres.

That becomes obvious quickly. Taurus, the instrumental opener, is space rock in the Hawkwind vein, albeit a little more grounded. Strange Blues, however, is emphatically a blues song, with the voice of Angie Jiménez coming to the fore. Someone else joins in later for a spoken section in accented English, but the song belongs to her and, eventually, Daniel Moisés Rojas, who plays (I presume) the laid back bluesy guitar and the much more intense solo that brings us home. The cymbals are overdone, but that might be the mix. I took the 16 KHz range down to nothing and it sounded great.

Simple Things is a slow and steady folk rock song. It's decent enough and it finds its groove, with some mellow synths from Jorge Barrón elevating it and a nice vocal outro too, but it fades entirely from memory by the time we're absorbed by Cosmos, an epic psychedelic workout that takes up the middle ten minutes of the album. Realising just how varied this record is, I started it again after Cosmos and had already forgotten Simple Things.

Cosmos has a bluesy vibe but they're cosmic blues this time. It's a pleasant song early on, with a vibe so laid back it's almost horizontal, but it gets better still. I loved this because it's both warm and peaceful, as if we're out there adrift somewhere in the cover art, but we're safe and comfortable. Life is good! Rojas takes over for a guitar workout before handing over in turn, almost like a relay race, to Barrón for a solo section on the synths. Eventually, Jiménez returns to wrap the song up, but we wonder how long we were gone, lost in the music.

Frankly, this album is worth your money for Cosmos alone, but there's more. There are only seven songs here but, between them, they last over forty-six minutes. One of those is Gypsy, a much heavier song that mixes stoner rock, seventies Deep Purple and folk-influenced prog like early Genesis. It feels instrumental but Jiménez's voice shows up halfway through to elevate it. As great as Cosmos is, Gypsy may be my favourite song here because it carries a real emotional weight to it. It's achingly beautiful, perhaps a darker side to the lightness of Cosmos.

That leaves a couple more blues songs: Childhood, a shorter piece with more strong keyboards, and Misery Mind, which closes out the record with a wink and a grin. It's playful and fun and gives everyone in the band a moment in the spotlight. Néstor Yzmaya gets a bass solo a couple of minutes in before handing off to Barrón and then Rojas. Oscar Garcia deserves praise here for accompanying everyone ably on his drums wherever they take the song.

In the end, the way the band play with genres ends up being their best and worst attribute. On the positive side, they're good at all of this. They're good as an entirely instrumental band, but they're good with vocals too. On the negative side, I wonder if they'd do better splitting up their different sounds onto different albums. Throw out a straight blues album and then give us Cosmos and Gypsy stretched out to album length. Each of those would be a little more coherent experience than this album that combines those two sounds. But hey, where would Misery Mind go? It could end up on either.

I have no idea why SixSuns, when there are only five band members, however brightly they shine. Maybe the sixth is creativity.

Coventry - The Arrival (2019)

Country: Mexico
Style: Heavy Metal
Rating: 6/10
Release Date: 13 Feb 2019
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | Twitter | YouTube

I couldn't resist checking out what this sounded like, given that I've never seen anyone like the young lady on the cover of this album on any of my trips to Coventry. Well, this band come from Ciudad Juárez on the other side of the Mexican border from El Paso, so I'm wondering where the band name came from. Googling doesn't help. It just points out that there are enough Mariachi bands in the city of Lady Godiva to warrant a top ten, which is pretty weird to me.

I don't recall Coventry being a hotbed of heavy metal, unlike Birmingham, only twenty miles away, which birthed the whole thing, courtesy of bands like Black Sabbath and Judas Priest. As a city, Coventry is probably better known for its ska revolution, courtesy of the Two Tone record label, rather than its metal bands like Bolt Thrower and Cathedral.

And hey, the influences of the Mexican band called Coventry seem to predate that, given that they're primarily a traditional heavy metal group, a lot of their sound sourced from the eighties, at the point when bands started to add some serious speed. The long notes that Luis Satyr hurls out are straight out of the NWOBHM era and there are plenty of Iron Maiden influences to be found, most obviously on the title track where Satyr really echoes Bruce Dickinson and the band follow suit with recognisably melodic Maiden guitar lines and crowd friendly backing vocals.

While The Arrival could easily have come out of the reject song pile for The Number of the Beast, Coventry aren't Maiden clones. Satyr emphasises that on tracks like You Die if You Try and Cordis Die where he goes for death growls instead, perhaps because both songs have the word "die" in their titles. He does mix it up on a wider basis, with tracks like Forget 'n' Forgive sounding more like a heavy ballad Metallica could have put onto the Black Album, right down to the James Hetfield inflections; or Mary Queen, which he introduces with a scream more akin to King Diamond, before moving into hardcore shouts.

I applaud the band for trying to avoid pigeonholes, but it's odd to hear the different vocal styles on similarly built tracks. I'm intrigued to hear that shouted hardcore chorus on Mary Queen suddenly turn into old school keyboards at the end. Using multiple vocal styles works as a contrast on You Die if You Try, where the clean and harsh vocals converse in interesting fashion. Given that we often hear both at once, I wonder if there's a guest on the album or one of the musicians is stepping up to share duties at the mike.

It works less when one track is in a completely different style to the next. To get away with that, you've got to go hog wild like Queen did on Sheer Heart Attack or Saigon Kick did on Water. When you're defining your sound as heavy metal in the traditional style, shifting from clean vocals to death growls on successive tracks makes me wonder if I'm listening to a compilation album not a single band's release.

For instance, going from the Metallica-esque Forget 'n' Forgive to an anthem like Something is Behind, which sounds much more like an arena rock band like Journey, is a little weird. The same goes from the shift from an Iron Maiden sound on The Arrival to the melodic death of Cordis Die.

I did like this album and Coventry are clearly able musicians, but I do feel that they need to figure out exactly what they want to sound like before the next album.