INFERNAL MANES — Infernal Manes (review)

INFERNAL MANES — Infernal Manes album cover EP · 2015 · Heavy Metal Buy this album from MMA partners
3.5/5 ·
Time Signature
Symphony of war...

Genre: traditional heavy metal

A track-by-track rendering of the band's 2003 demo "Battle of Souls", Infernal Manes' eponymous release is set to be released in January 2015 on Edged Circle Productions. As seems to be quite common on the Norwegian scene, Infernal Manes is a traditional metal band consisting of members from more extreme acts - in this case, the black-trash act Dead to this World and the black metal bands Deathcult and Gaahlskagg.

The opening track is an epic old school metal battle hymn, complete with soaring vocals and heavy metal screams, twin guitars and larger-than-life lyrics. 'Infernal Manes' starts out slightly reminiscent of early Running Wild, but morphs into a more uptempo affair along the lines of early Iron Maiden meets early Queensrÿche. The chorus is particularly epic and deliberately over the top and features galloping guitars to boot. The aptly titled 'Mind Destructor' opens with a guitar figure similar to the main riff of Ozzy Osbourne's 'Crazy Train', but takes on a more rough-edged character. 'True Force of Power' is darker, but features a highway-rolling friendly chorus and a blistering guitar solo, while 'Battle of the Souls' captures the ruffian nature of the tough guys that constituted the NWoBHM scene (which is quite a feat, since this band consists of Norwegians who were just little kids in the early 1980s. I guess this reflects how much they love and understand early 80s metal. THis track also features a nice twin-guitar lead section. 'Come to the Sabbath' is a fairly successful cover version of the Mercyful Fate classic.

The production is a bit on the raw side (not black metal raw but NWoBHM raw), and that does definitely add a sense of authenticity to the music, which I am sure a lot of old timers will appreciate. However, given the emphasis on melody, I can easily imagine that this album would sound extremely good with a hi-end production.

In any case, this is yet another successful old school metal release by Norwegian extreme metal musicians exploring traditional metal roots of most contemporary genres of metal. I think that old timer metal fans are going to like this one a lot. According to Edged Circle Production, Infernal Manes' debut full-length is slated for release in 2015 as well, so old school metal fans can keep themselves occupied with the release at hand while waiting for the debut album.
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