|
|||||||||||||
Guitarist Jack Frost and his main band Seven Witches have returned with Deadly Sins, the follow-up to 2006's Amped. That album saw the debut of new vocalist Alan Tecchio (ex-Hades) who replaced James Rivera. With a turn towards a more modern aggressive sound and somewhat lack lustre song writing, it was not very well received by fans of the band. I've always found Seven Witches to be rather hit and miss with their albums. Some, like Passage To The Other Side and Xiled To Infinity And One were excellent U.S. style power metal albums and are revered by many as the band's finest work to date. With Deadly Sins, Seven Witches has taken a conceptual approach; employing the 7 sins that Mahatma Ghandi said would eventually destroy mankind as the basis for the thematic thread that ties all the songs together.
Deadly Sins keeps the modern drop D chunky riff style introduced with Amped and still shows some influences from modern thrash metal but in this case, the song writing is far superior as is the vocal performance of Alan Tecchio. The album gets off to a great start with the one-two punch of the title track, Deadly Sins and Science. Drop D tuned guitars provide crushing riffs and are driven by some very solid hammering double bass work. The aggressive and sometimes screaming tone to Alan's vocals are often offset by multi-layering for the chorus sections; giving a fairly large chunk of this album an older Iced Earth vibe. Strong similarities in Alan Tecchio's vocal style and that of Matt Barlow (Iced Earth) are frequently found throughout this album. Tracks like Pleasure and Worship are more of the chugging heavy metal type with both Knowledge and Wealth using more muted galloping Iron Maiden style riffs. The Maiden influence is very strong with Knowledge not only in its use of galloping riffs but the riff breaks and lead harmonies also borrow heavily from the metal masters. Man Of The Millennium is the only power ballad like track and it begins with clean guitar with lead fills before building to an explosive Sign Of The Southern Cross style riff mid song. Jack Frost's lead work is as solid as ever and overall, the production and abundance of killer riffs really adds lots of "meat" to the sound of Seven Witches. This is the heaviest they have ever sounded and although I prefer the more heavy power metal style of the James Rivera era of the band, this album has as certain infectiousness to it. Lyrically, the album is a much deeper than it is musically, with many tracks having roughly the same sort of arrangement. Deadly Sins still may divide fans of the band but it's a much better effort than Amped and we see a further progression of the "new" Seven Witches sound. It just begs to be cranked up and enjoyed for what it is; a very solid heavy metal album. |
|||||||||||||
Killing Songs : Deadly Sins, Science and Knowledge |
Marty quoted 80 /100 | ||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||
|
There are 2 replies to this review. Last one on Fri May 16, 2008 8:51 am
View and Post comments