Well, this is an awkward period these days. In what way ? Well, it's been like 2 month that we receive killing albums after killing albums, between the new Running Wild, Blind Guardian (oh my god !), Squealer, Angel Dust... etc etc (and the list goes on and on). I must confess that I'm in heaven these days with all these releases, but somehow it's difficult to focus on only one album. Anyway, this is for sure a very good period for us metalheads, but maybe not so good for our wallets ;).

Norther are a band from Finland, who plays a music that can directly be related to Children Of Bodom, but with something more into it, probably a much more epic approach into it. The music is mind blowing Power Metal with incredible riffs who delivers an impossible battle against the keyboards, just like COB, with vocals that Alexi could have singed. But the band doesn't sound like a copycat band, but they've for sure been influenced by the new masters of melodic death metal. The song presented here : Released, is an absolute killer (at least :)), fast and furiously paced, with heavy and lightspeed riffs, a few smart progressive transitions, great guitar work and an amazing melody, especially during the chorus where the background guitar plays a very catchy melody while the front guitars delivers heavy and fast riffs. The balance is between aggression and melody to its paroxysm. The second track is a cover song, called Youth Gone Wild, it shows the band under another point of view, the mid paced song with aggressive vocals. Although the song is quite nice (especially the last minute), it doesn't match the power and furiously fast feeling of the first one. I think that the main issue is that a Hard Rock band would be better equipped (vocally) to cover this kind of song, or maybe Norther should have tried to cover the song with clean vocals (the choirs already are actually)... just a thought.

Anyway, this single announces a very good debut album, which I'll review next week, and I can tell you that these guys will make lots of people speak about themselves. An impressive new melodic death metal is born, one that can easily fight in the same category than Children Of Bodom, without the originality advantage maybe, but that still makes them a hell of a challenger. More next week in the review of their simply fantastic debut album Dreams Of Endless War !