Cav's Place

After last week’s post, I’ll continue on this probably awfully inappropriate path, adding another along the same lines to this series, so again only having Ukrainian bands that are actual new finds for me, albeit from different parts of the country this time around. I’m still rushing even when it comes to picking the bands, not really using consistent criteria, but the three in this post do stick to my recent rule, having released new material, or in case of two of the three their only material, within the past year. Again, I can only hope that the members of these bands will make it through this, along with the rest of the Ukrainians and the country as a whole… And with all of us in this part of the world, and not only.

Again using the alphabetical order, I’ll start with Blessdivine, who only have one album so far, so both picks will have to be from it. It also seems to be another one of those infuriating cases of a label not allowing their bands to post their music on their own channels, and since it’s also from Italy I’m starting to wonder whether it’s something of a rule there, but I guess I’ll just have to deal with it and, since it’s the only song that they have at least a lyric video for, Servants of the Cross will have to be the first pick, while for the second I’ll go with A New Dawn. They have a pretty typical power metal sound, which also implies only male vocals, but they pull it off quite well, so I can’t complain, and found A New Dawn in particular to be quite enjoyable.

Defiant is a far more established band, so I just listened to the few songs that they have videos for and the two picks would be Breaker of Chains and Defiant… As strange as it is to see a self-titled song appearing quite a few albums into a band’s “life”. Either way, this is also power metal, and also only having male vocals, though they seem to have changed a few vocalists over the years and early on, when they weren’t singing in English, I’m seeing a female vocalist listed as well. But what I heard now shows that they’re confident, experienced, skilled, the instrumental parts also making me think of far better known bands at times.

As for Magic Infinity, they also only have one album released so far, and only two songs, Broken Heart and Nostradamus, posted separately, so I’ll take the easy way and go with them as my two picks. They also only have male vocals despite the fact that, at least based on these two songs, it seems fair enough to see them listed under Gothic, the sound leaning towards the theatrical, if I may use the term, so contrasting voices would definitely help. But at least there don’t seem to be growls, bar one little moment, at least as far as I could tell after quickly skipping through their other songs as well. Sadly, they seem to be badly suffering because of poor equipment, or at least it seems to me that the recording quality is poor and little, if any, work was done on the tracks after the recording itself, so what you can hear here is probably not what they’d really be capable of.