This week's unsigned discovery - Sons of Lioth

I love listening to new stuff on bandcamp, it's probably the hunter/gatherer instinct. It's so rewarding when you find a gem. And you don't often have to hunt very far to find an unsigned band playing music that competes with the week's best commercial releases.

Today's discovery is Belgian band Sons of Lioth. The music covers diverse topics from lighthearted sci-fi to more serious swords and dragons. The style is pretty consistent though. They cite Priest, AC/DC and Maiden as influences and that gives you the feel.

The next and more sad discovery is that the band have decided to call it a day.

All four of their releases are available online for reasonably small amounts of cash. I chose the cover of Large Hadron Spider for this post because I love the artwork and the pun.

https://sonsoflioth.bandcamp.com

Notable New Rock and Metal Releases, Aug-Sept 2017

Venom Inc. - Avé : It seems pretty common for bands to split and then both halves wanting to use the name. Tank is a notable one - Algy Ward's project and with the Mick Tucker/Cliff Evans fork have both used the name Tank on their albums. More often one of the breakaways clearly has the rights to use the name and the other has to use a variation and that's the case with Venom Inc. although this band includes Mantas and Abaddon, two thirds of the classic lineup. The vocalist is Demolition Man, who was I believe vocalist of the official Venom for a while. All of that aside, this is an amazing album, it doesn't have Cronos' vocals but it does have a lot of the style of the classic albums. An outstanding album of this year.
★★★★★

Sons of Crom - The Black Tower : Difficult to pigeonhole, the quality of the performance (particularly vocals) varies as much as the style. But there's something really enjoyable here. It's just two guys and it feels very honest.

Janet Gardner - Janet Gardner : Female-fronted dirty rock'n'roll / metal.
★★★☆☆

Eluveitie - Evocation II : A continuation of the Evocation project, more folk than metal with this one. But that's something I love and so I'm including it here.
★★★☆☆

Portrait - Burn the World : Merciful Fate-style fun. This one is probably more original and less MF-copying than their previous records. One of my favourites this week.
★★★★★

Crimfall - Amain : There are folk and symphonic elements here, clean operatic singing and growly stuff. I think that variety helps to make this such an amazing listen. But great songwriting and some great sounds are at its core. This is a real favourite.
★★★★☆

Bobaflex - Eloquent Demons : Groovy, a bit melodic. Great cover of Pink Floyd's Hey You.
★★★★☆

Korpiklaani - Live at Masters of Rock : This rests nicely between folk metal and troll-type stuff, loads of fun.
★★★★☆

Arch Enemy - Will to Power : Obviously going to be a commercial success. Much is being made of the 'clean vocal' track (Reason to Believe) which you'll love if you enjoy a good power ballad. The 'War Eternal' formula is obvious in a few tracks. Album sounds pretty epic in places.
★★★★★

Stallion - From the Dead : for lovers of NWOBHM / early thrash who don't mind a bit of dodgy production. It sounds like something from the Ebony studio, a particular love of mine.
★★★★☆

Motörhead - Under Cöver : The 'Heroes' cover was unveiled at Wacken, along with the fact that Lemmy wanted it included on Bad Medicine. Sympathy For The Devil was included on that album and it was a great choice if they only had room for one cover. A number of these have been released before, but make a great album when collected together. It's an amazing thing, if a little unsettling, to be seeing a Motörhead album in the new releases.
★★★★★

Epica - The Solace System : I gather that these few tracks didn't fit on the last album, so there are no surprises, but this EP is incredibly epic.
★★★★★