If you want to get more information about any of the bands featured at The Metal Moose Show, simply Google the band and/or the song name to find their official website and Facebook page and, more important than that, attend their live concerts and buy their music. Here at The Headbanging Moose you can find detailed reviews of Austrian Melodic Death Metal band Mandatory and Paraguayan Symphonic Metal band Pergana (just click on the links below to read the reviews). Support your local bands… AND FOLLOW THE MOOSE!
On The Metal Moose Show this week:
1. Blackheart Gospel – Wasteland America
2. Ainrail – Rural Sludge
3. Arreat – Frostburn
4. Autumn Stay – Ghost
5. Era – To The Grave
6. False Hope Fades – Break
7. Gathering After Ashes – Angels Take Flight
8. Mandatory – For The World To See
9. Motherfaster – The Nymph And The God
10. Octave Jaw – Never Free
11. Never Mind The Riot – Sacrifice
12. Pergana – Return To Innocence
13. Raftree – The Eyes You Hide
14. Sin Of Apathy – Never Forgive
15. Stahl Gorthol – Infernal Wrath
16. The Desolate – The Great Departure
17. Standing Ovation – Gravity Beats Nuclear Permafrost
18. The Crawling – The Right To Crawl
19. Dead City Crown – Seed Of Rain
20. Doll Skin – Lets Be Honest
21. Triumph Under Fire – No More
22. Viggenblot – From Flames Anew
Click HERE to listen to this week’s episode on Spreaker.
If you want to get more information about any of the bands featured at The Metal Moose Show, simply Google the band and/or the song name to find their official website and Facebook page and, more important than that, attend their live concerts and buy their music. Here at The Headbanging Moose you can find detailed reviews of Austrian Melodic Death Metal band Mandatory and Finnish Doom/Stoner Metal band Dö (just click on the links below to read the reviews). And for the first time ever, a new segment on the show called “Moose Masters” presents one of the songs from the new kick-ass album by Swedish Black Metal icons Marduk, also reviewed here! Support your local bands… AND FOLLOW THE MOOSE!
On The Metal Moose Show this week (not necessarily in this order):
1. Snakeskin Prison – Smokin Whiskey
2. Bleeding Eyes – Demon Haze
3. Seven Circle Sunrise – Dead Love Letters
4. Gotland – Gloria Et Morte
5. Eye Of The Enemy – Burn The World
6. Adorn The Wicked – Spirit
7. Crawling Manifest – From Afar
8. Crows Cage – Skin
9. Four Skulls – Holding On
10. Heaven Dust – World Goes Grey
11. Lord Marshall – Event Horizon
12. Mandatory – End Of Watch
13. Downfall 2012 – Divinity
14. Downfall 2012 – Face 2 Face
15. Mobday – Jester
16. Urn – Cast In Amber
17. Sleepwalking Home – Skin Army
18. Sanguine Galaialis – Into The Heart Of Chaos
19. Dö – For The Worms
20. Marduk – Frontschwein
Click HERE to listen to this week’s episode on Spreaker or HERE to listen to it on Mixcloud.
A good option for fans of Melodic Death Metal who enjoy European harmony blended with North American violence.
Austrian Melodic Death Metal band Mandatory is one of those cases where harmony and brutality walk hand in hand with each other, creating an electrifying sound perfect for live performances, which by the way helped this Linz-based quintet win the International Live Award in 2011 in Austria. Now with Catharsis, the band’s second full-length album, those guys deliver a more melodic and technical Death Metal than their previous releases without sounding too commercial or generic.
Although Catharsis is quite different from the band’s 2009 debut album Carbon Black, it’s still very technical and heavy, recommended for both fans of Melodic Death Metal and the more modern heavy music from North America. Moreover, do not expect to listen to old school Death or Thrash Metal, as the sounding in the whole album is very polished and even progressive depending on the song, similar to what bands such as Arch Enemy are doing today. You can indeed expect lots of shredding, guttural and clean vocals mixed, and fast and technical blast beats.
The opening track, End of Watch, can be summarized as pure European Melodic Death Metal with hints of American Metalcore, with its double bass boosting the very melodic guttural vocals. Then we have Act I: Tragedy, the first of three “acts” (or whatever the band wanted those to be) where its excellent instrumental, clean vocals and motivational lyrics (“Embrace the Light within / Shatter the Sky / Your pain and misery / Will purify your mind”) give a good balance to the song; and the slower but heavier To the Streets, a modern Thrash Metal tune the likes of contemporary Metallica and A7X, with some intense riffs and an interesting guitar solo perfect for some headbanging.
Emperor has the most Metalcore rhythm of all songs, especially its guitar duos, with highlights to its very polished production (enhancing the sounding of all instruments) and the political message in its lyrics (“You aren’t machines / You are not chained / To these ambassadors / Of hatred fear and despise”); while the very enjoyable Act II: Catharsis begins with an intense low riff before turning into fast Melodic Death Metal. It even flirts with progressive metal due to all its breaks, variations and the excellent work done by both guitarists Chris Hörmann and Manuel “Mani” Rohrauer.
Shadowmaker is another good melodic and very progressive tune, albeit not as heavy as the rest of the album, with its guitar solos reminding me of some old stuff done by Dream Theater; followed by For the World to See, which gets back to Melodic Death Metal with its clean vocals being once again a nice touch to the overall musicality. Finally, we have Act III: Purification, the last of the three “acts”, another progressive/melodic heavy track with uprising lyrics (“Rise Up! / Liberate your wisdom / Rise Up! / Let the storm break loose”), and closing the album we have Blueprint, the most Thrash/Death Metal track of all with highlights to its technical and professional instrumental and the nice sound effects on the background. In addition, it might only be a coincidence, but the three “acts” (add also “End of Watch” to this list) are the best songs of the album by far in my opinion.
You can purchase Catharsis at Mandatory’s official BandCamp page, where the album comes as a special edition with lots of extra stuff, or also at Amazon, iTunes and other online stores. Go for it if you’re a fan of the most modern type of Melodic Death Metal available in the market, uniting melody, violence and fun in heavy music.
Best moments of the album:End of Watch, Act I: Tragedy, Act II: Catharsis and Act III: Purification.
Worst moments of the album:To the Streets and For the World to See.
Released in 2014 Independent
Track listing 1. End of Watch 3:53
2. Act I: Tragedy 4:15
3. To the Streets 6:53
4. Emperor 5:08
5. Act II: Catharsis 6:53
6. Shadowmaker 4:36
7. For the World to See 5:45
8. Act III: Purification 5:18
9. Blueprint 3:51
Band members Markus Hundsberger – vocals
Chris Hörmann – guitars, backing vocals
Manuel “Mani” Rohrauer – guitars, backing vocals
Leo Wolfmayr – bass
Mike Pfaffenhuemer – drums, clean vocals
If you want to get more information about any of the bands featured at The Metal Moose Show, simply Google the band and/or the song name to find their official website and Facebook page and, more important than that, attend their live concerts and buy their music. Here at The Headbanging Moose you can find detailed reviews of Austrian Melodic Death Metal band Mandatory and Paraguayan Symphonic Metal band Pergana (just click on the links below to read the reviews). Support your local bands… AND FOLLOW THE MOOSE!
THE HEADBANGING MOOSE 