It is more than obvious that during the last few years there has been a revival of the heavy metal music with numerous bands emerging from every corner of the world. We are not expecting the new Iron Maiden of Judas Priest and we don’t have the illusion that an upcoming band will ever gain the dynamics for sold out arena shows of millions of record sales. The movement has gone underground and the labels seem more grounded and realized as far as it concerns the new reality of the music industry. It’s better to invest on ten upcoming acts than milk the same old tired cow until the beast has nothing more to give…
American band Visigoth is part of this new wave. They started in 2010 and followed the old fashioned road: demo recording-self financed EP-major label debut (Metal Blade in this case). These are the right steps for every band with ambition and trust in its own powers. Musically speaking, Visigoth is in the place where Grand Magus and Twisted Tower Dire cross paths. Their songs are uplifting, well crafted, with the right dosage of epic feeling. And if we look a bit further there are also some Thin Lizzy influences giving a High Spirits feel to some of the songs. Credit goes to the choice of covering a Manilla Road song (even though “Necropolis” is a common choice but I could compare the move as the one made by Doomsword on its groundbreaking debut featuring Cirith Ungol’s Nadsokor).
So the first sample of work is more than positive. It remains to be seen if these Utah guys (not what you would call “heavy metal state”…) will stay afloat, recording meaningful albums and not Iron Maiden copies speeded up to 45 rpm like many of their colleagues do…
