NEW MUSIC FRIDAY: Rock and Metal Releases for 10-4-24


Covering various subgenres, it’s New Music Friday: The Rock and Metal Releases for 10-4-24.

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ALBUM REVIEW: Wind Rose – Trollslayer


On paper, a band from Italy dubbed as “Dwarf Metal” may have you scratching your head. Yet when you listen to Wind Rose, it just works and it just makes sense. The quintet from the Tuscany region takes the festive feel of Folk Metal and the playfulness from Power Metal to create this fantastical new genre. Their unique merry-making is greatly contagious and explains why they are rapidly growing in popularity. They are now getting ready to release their sixth full-length record, Trollslayer (Napalm Records) that advances the band’s well-known jovial sound. They have managed to take all their best features, importantly multiple songs about beer, and compiled it all into this new album.Continue reading


PREVIEW: New Music Friday – Rock and Metal Releases Preview for 10-4-24


Covering various subgenres, it’s New Music Friday: The Rock and Metal Releases for 10-4-24.

Who has the best covers this week?Continue reading


Powerwolf Share a Single and Video for “Sinners of the Seven Seas” – New Album Out Soon



Award winning German metal outfit, Powerwolf, have revealed their new single, “Sinners of the Seven Seas.” Accompanied by a themed music video, it is taken from the upcoming studio album, Wake Up The Wicked, due out on July 26th, via Napalm Records. Watch it in the article below and read more from the band.
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Powerwolf Book First Full North American Tour


German heavy metal heroes, Powerwolf, have announced their return to North America. Featuring support from Canadian power metallers and label mates, Unleash The Archers, the tour will begin in Los Angeles, CA at The Hollywood Palladium on August 29, running through to September 15, at Place Bell, Laval, QC. The band will also be on tour in Europe later in the year. Keep reading below for live listings and more.

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Powerwolf Book 2024 European Tour Dates with New Album Planned


With news of a new album next year, this week Powerwolf announced this week that they have booked their biggest headline tour to date, for October 2024. Taking place at the biggest arenas in Europe, with 16 shows in total, the tour will visit venues in Paris, Amsterdam, Berlin, Budapest, Prague and Vienna. Find out more below.

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REVIEW: Gloryhammer – Beast In Black: Live at The Mill, Birmingham


Greeted with a queue that stretches the length of the entire street and beyond, the nearest many get to seeing Italian Dwarven Metal act Wind Rose is listening to them from outside. ‘The Breed of Durin’, ‘To Erebor’, and of course ‘Diggy Diggy Hole’ sound like they’re going down well, but it’s disappointing that a large percentage of the crowd has to miss most of their set.Continue reading


Bloodstock Open Air Adds More Bands, Extra Club Nights Leading Up To The Fest


 

Bloodstock Open Air is fast approaching and the fest has added a bevy of new bands. The infamous BOA club nights are also back, and have grown to 26 more nights. Details below: Continue reading


Wind Rose – Wardens of the West Wind


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In for a penny, in for a pound, right? And sometimes that dividing line between success or failure is just how far you’re prepared to take things. Power Metal, with its origins heavily rooted in the extravagances of Yngwie and embracing and taking the more bombastic elements of symphonic music and film scores, is often guilty of not going far enough, playing the safe game mixing Europe with Helloween and churning out decent, if standard, fast-rock fare. On their second album, Wardens of the West Wind (Scarlet), Wind Rose follow in the boot-prints of countrymen Rhapsody by ramping things to the max, and to some effect.

See, where Rhapsody made a name for themselves was by being brave enough to make their music and songs epic; as grandiose, as pompous, as couldn’t-give-a-fuck-what’s-cool as possible, and to think outside re-writing Blind Guardian licks to wanting to create something monumental, something cinematic, something befitting of the grandest of stages. Wind Rose have produced a stirring, rousing album in the vein of Symphony of Enchanted Lands (Limb) that sets them apart from the majority of the others who sit in the Power Metal bubble by taking that chance to do something different. The movie that Wind Rose are tracking is more nautical than Rhapsody’s swords-and-dragons fantasy, as if a hero quest head-on collision of Pirates of the Caribbean and Waterworld was sound-tracked by a collaboration of Symphony X and Luca Turilli.

Attack is another area where Power Metal bands stand or fall, and Wind Rose bring the energy of a thousand marauding pirates fuelled by rum and the promise of treasures great hidden under an X. Francesco Cavalieri’s voice leads the quintet and is another competitive advantage, capable of drama, authority and melody, and making sense of the grandiloquence going on around him, pulling the power and the might cascading around him into strong, viable songs.

In a field that consists of a handful of giants and many who will struggle to achieve a status above mediocrity Wardens… positions Wind Rose as one to watch. If their live show can re-capture the exuberance on record, we will have a new name to light up the European scene.

 

8.0/10

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STEVE TOVEY