New Finds – LXXV
I’ll start another rushed post from this series with Belle Morte, which is the one band that’s not an actual new find, and which doesn’t even have new material actually released within the past year, the latest album having been released in January of 2025. But one reason why I decided to include them now is that, while for obvious reasons I normally ignore bands from Russia or Belarus, I accidentally checked them now and found that they didn’t just relocate to Poland, but openly took a stance against the war. And I actually held back from including them more than once before just because I didn’t actually check their current location, so I’m now fixing that and making use of the fact that they released videos for two songs within the past year to stretch it and go with one of them, Willow, as the first pick. As for the older song, I’ll go with Lace. And all I’ll add now is that, in my opinion, they’re the best band in this post, so do listen to them.
Sadly, as much as I’d have liked to stick to a theme in this post, I couldn’t find any other band originally from Belarus or Russia that’s on the list but not yet included in such a post and which has relocated, and no Polish band that’s not yet included seems to have new material either, so I had a quick look for something new from there and decided to continue with Enchanted Steel, which is a solo power metal project that doesn’t take itself seriously, so you shouldn’t expect much, but it does a decent job with what are obviously few resources. The most recent release is By the Blood of the Hammer, so I’ll go with that as the first pick, while the second one will be Quest for the Battle of Battle, which actually struck me as sounding noticeably better than the rest.
As for the third pick, that’s Catalyst Crime and it just happened to show up among the recommendations while I was checking the others, so it’s another actual new find for me, though it’s an established and, if I may use the term, professional group that’s been around for quite a number of years. But, while everything else shows the sort of polish you’d expect from such a band, I’d say that the vocals are actually the weaker part, and while listening to their songs I found myself wondering how would they sound with a better vocalist. Your opinion may differ, however, so I’ll just say that I made it easy for myself and just picked Cursebreaker and Condemn Me to Chaos from the few songs that are posted officially, with videos, and leave it at that.
