Stay Pure D.I.Y

Pollution – 'Modern warfare' –Full-lenght – 2010

They don't have many releases in their short-term history, but what they have is worthy and tasty!!! Since the split with 'Deadly Mosh', entitled 'Deadly Pollution', they took a step of promoting themselves on the world battlegrounds with this 11 track beast of true German influenced, harsh thrash!!! They've gone even better now, with simple arrangements and improved vocals, more original like now, and understandable too. The production is another great aspect to the whole image too, along with the clear, dry guitar sound. You can guess by the titles what the lyrics are about, I personally didn't pay much attention to them and enjoyed the music instead. There are some songs from the previous release (In which you can find the best track – 'Devil's Henchman'), and new ones of course. This is a part of the greater what the Balkans offer and you can get this from 'EBM' records, together with superb quality of artwork and print. Cheers to this!

Label: [email protected]; www.ebmrecords.com

Space Eater – 'Aftershock' – Full-lenght – 2010

It seems that the death of Bosko Radisic, before the vocal and main songwriter, didn't put the band to rest and that's a good thing. The dude was an icon and now a legend to the Serbian and Balkan scene, involved in every kind of UG activities. After his death by fire in 2009 (the same year we lost our own legend in Macedonia too – Stefan), the band went on for recording the album with symbolical moniker – 'Aftershock'. Here are 10 original songs, on which the vocals are taken and re-mastered from Bosko's previous demo recordings. All in all, the producer made a great job and all of this sounds perfect, especially for the style they play. It's thrash, more oriented to the bay-area, but made in clean, practical and calm way. By calm I don't mean passive, it's explosive and mean as it gets. The high-pitched vocals bring that power feeling to it, but the lyrics are completely opposite to that, with their mean and dirty shouts and messages. There isn't much special about this, but it's a must have anyways, hehe. The music is solid and the release has its significance. Best song I found here is 'Abort', and the second place goes to 'FAA' ('Flames Across America')... Terror breeds new terror, safety's just a dream, Extreme deeds are answered with deeds just as extreme... (BOKI)

Band: www.space-eater.com

Label: Stormspell Records, P.O. Box 641852, San Jose, CA 95164 USA; [email protected]

Children of Doom – ‘Doom, be doomed, ör fuck off’- Full-length – 2011

From the first outlook on the release, you can notice how cool the band looks on the outside. The essence of the music tells the same story… It’s not your usual doom! It has the feelings on the fundamental 70’s rock, blues, punk touches, with great dose of rolling rhythms and dark, sad even, atmosphere. It’s simply genius! Low gained guitars and dry drums, even sadder, but strong to the bone. This band and their six songs are awesome, becoming more and more creative, with a sound almost forgotten.. That is something special… It’s their first album, so you better get hold of it and follow these three guys to the end!

Band: Children of Doom – 2o bis rue de Thelus – 62223 RICLINCOURT – FRANCE, [email protected]

Label: [email protected]

Mad Goya – ‘Put olindrali avijanera’ – Full-length - 2010

The most relaxed band ever to set a foot on the Balkans! They come from Serbia and have a fair share of experience. Recently they came to Skopje to play a gig and it was awesome. I wrote a gig report for that show but it got erased and I lost my interest in writing another. I had a little talk to the vocal Blaza who seemed very happy with the gig and the attendance. This album is originally released by ‘Brewery’ Distro, but due to lack of cash on the gig I purchased this self-released edition. There are ten songs here, of which two covers ‘Countess bathory’ and ‘Milk’. The music is kind of thrash/crossover, simple and interesting, with joke lyrics, mostly about beer. Following the great dry production is the brutally funny vocal and massive crowd singing at parts. Every song has a story behind, so you’ll find yourself banging and moshing to ‘Prdnio u fenjer’, Za cugu mi dajemo glave’, and the hit ‘Duha je ostavila devojka?!’ even at home. They have couple more stuff before this and anyone who is interested should check them out and won’t be disappointed! 

Band: Blaza Vasilic, V. Karadzica 15, 25264 Sonta, SERBIA; [email protected]

Judgment Hammer – ‘Arbiter of fate’ – Full-length - 2009

Most of the songs featured on this first album from the band were also part of their previous demos. I had an interview and reviews of them in my very first issue, since I am, or was, friend with Jared (vocal and guitar), but kind of lost contact. They worked on ‘Arbiter…’ almost two years and reached out for the glory with ten thrash hymns, sounding very old-school and tasty. It might not keep you entertained the whole time, but if you a real thrash fan you would like this. There are heavy guitar playing and cool solos, and with the rest of the components sound very tight, even though the album was self-recorded. From artistic aspect, it’s not that’s totally new or original, or complicated… Yet, it is a calm thrash album. Why calm? Well, that’s a part that I missed here, ‘cos I just couldn’t feel the spark in any song. Maybe the MOMENTS were an energy should’ve been felt were wrongly conducted, but it’s no big deal. ‘No surrender’ is the shortest song (4:53) here, and the whole damn full-length lasts over 59 minutes. You decide if that’s good or wrong, anyway, the guys are still playing and are spreading their fan-base, so become one of them by reaching the album directly from the band at the following contacts!  

Band: Judgment Hammer, 938 Porter Hill Road, Stevensville, MT 59870, US; [email protected]

Infest – ‘Onwards to destroy’ – Full-length – 2010

I can say without a doubt that Infest are one the most affirmed Balkan bands in the past five years. This is their second album, again released by great labels, ‘Grom’ Records & ‘Zero Budget’ Production, proving again that their attitude is a grandmother-fucker to the face of all who deny metal! I had the opportunity to listen to some of the songs on their gig in January 2010, where I made an interview with them for the previous issue too, and a gig report that got lost… Never mind that, but I must say being used to the previous rawer, wilder sound this came in as a little surprise and of the first couple of times hearing it, I just couldn’t get use to it. But I adopt to the circumstances, mostly being changed by the better production, but the old Infest – vibe is still there. They have their own way of composing, very, very brutal and fast with sudden breaks, leads and explosive solos. Another important factor is the vocal of Vandal, recognizable even if he has a throat infection. Eight songs here, all in English with the exception of ‘Krstu je kraj’, all well. Shortly after the releasing the band broke up, fortunately, it re-emerged and they have a booked show in Macedonia, hopefully being featured here with a nice and proper review. I don’t have it on my distro as a CD, but I have the great cassette substitute, released by ‘TerrorBlast’ Distro.

Band: www.infestlegions.com

Label 1: Grom Records, Vuka Karadzica 12, 25263 Prigrevica, Serbia

Label: 2 Martin Brnovjak, Voronezska 2550/10, 616 00 Brno, Czech Republic

Skullcrush – ‘Skullcrush’ – Full-length – 2010

Really great guys and friends of mine that make awesomely simple thrash metal. Their songs are catchy, simple, pure and ideologically true. My congratulations go to all of the seven songs here, neither of them a weak ark, and by my opinion some of them like ‘В.Р.К.О.Л.А.К.’ or ‘Непокор’ are instant thrash metal classics. If you want to have a clearer picture and defined taste of what this music is bout, I’ll dare you to imagine the early Exodus or Sodom stuff, mixed with really small quantities of core and rock’n roll elements at moments. This is only the first album of Skullcrush and they have some more material prepared, now only being played live, but we can expect a studio recording soon. The production is humble, part of it home-recorded, but has all the elements to be called an album-recording. The album is self-released and the copies come very cheap, around 2 Euros, so I see no reason why not to order one. If you prefer a cassette version, get it from my distro, it’s my 10th release and it comes with glossy b&w cover. Great work guys!

Band: [email protected]

Beyond The Horizon – ‘Reign of the unholy stars’ – Ep – 2010

Most of the guys from this band are my close friends, but just to say to everyone not to worry, ‘cos I won’t be going soft with them neither… Hehe, they come from the city of Skopje, Macedonia, and have been playing their melodic death metal for some time now. And it would be a great mistake to just label them as that, so I will add the tags ‘black’ and ‘core’ to the equation too. Mostly it is all about melodic death, but there are scream and blasting parts that remind me of the blackster, and oh how I love when a groove/core part comes! The main problem in these five songs are the breakpoints, the transgressions of one riff to another when it SHOULD happen a cosmic explosion, but instead the music keeps being calm and tedious. I think for that we should blame the producer and his plastic sound of the drums, but the band made a mistake with not fixing the right riffs at the right time… Maybe there are too many riffs in one song, or they just weren’t modified right. Anyways, there is a brighter side where you can feel the good technical level they have whiles playing, and man how I love does solos from Zver and Pero, a thing that most of the bands today miss doing in their music… The vocal, Sure, transmits from screams to growls and does that well, while holding and playing his bass. Now, from what I know, these songs are far away from what the band is actually doing today. They have new songs and corrected line-up, and the music is more groovy, technical and interesting for sure. But we are going to talk about that when an actual material will come around, and ‘till then I suggest to get this Ep from the label or the band and you will taste a part of our Macedonian Underground! 

Blood Pollution – ‘Metal zombies’ – Full-length – 2010

Huh, this just keeps getting better and better! With improved production and new power ‘Blood Pollution’ attack our ears with ten new songs of pure thrash ‘n roll infestation. The same old, good speed feeling and motorized guitars, make you want to jump and scream out loud to the tracks like ‘Metal zombies’, ‘5 roses’, Perverts from hell’ etc… The solos are better and the drums are killing, and again I can’t complain about anything here. I forgot to mention the previous time that the label ‘Atomic Carnage’ that releases Blood Pollution’s album is owned by the vocal Nick Thrash, a good friend of mine that helped with my ex-band a lot! The last song on the album is an interesting cover of Iggy Pop’s ‘Search & Destroy’! Get up off your asses and order this!

Band & Label: www.myspace.com/bloddpollutionofficial

Hardfaced – ‘Show them what they fear’ – Full-length – 2011

The next thing HF did after we invited them, was that they invited us to play in Ohrid with Nepokor. The gig went phenomenal and I was surprised by the aggressive behavior (in positive way) of Ohrid’s metalheads and hardcore guys! At this gig I bought this album along with a t-shirt from the band. I must say that this album is pretty much in the same line with ‘More than hate’, but has that better production and artistic, esthetic touch in meaning of bridges, song-length and breakdowns. The band maybe lost a bit of its wildness, but it gained on creativity. Here we have eight songs of which my favorite ‘Running your own shadows’ has the best lyrics and it fits most for live appearances. After this, Harfaced singed with a label from USA that is going to help them in future with organizing shows or releasing albums. Congratulations and keep up that fucking attitude you have! Ohrid HxC Family!!! (BOKI)

Band: [email protected]