Is real rock maintaining potential? I'm not talking about the horseshit promoted as "rock" by the mainstream. No. Hell no! Seven out of the ten titles rounding up my 2nd quarter Top 10 Rock Albums are debut releases! I keep hearing daft statements: this or that is bringing rock back ... Breakingnews: rock music was always around, in the present! Unfortunately, for the last 3 decades, the people responsible for promoting music managed to dilute the term "rock" to cover music t

Rock is also being well represented so far this year. Still not quite at the same volume of releases as its more aggressive counterparts, but quite varied stylistically. Europe continues to fly the hard rock flag high. The obvious 1980s influences still have an immense impact on the genre, and not only on the veterans, but encouragingly so on the new talent! Please support the acts you love! They need us during these trying times. I know I'm not alone looking ahead at a not t

Hard Rock, Prog Rock, AOR & Glam Metal Thirty years ago the styles and sub-genres clearly exemplified by the following fifty titles were an integral part of the music mainstream. The assault against proper Rock music intensified in the coming years. Many so-called music experts deemed rock and roll to be dead and buried. Failed efforts to replace it with, for the lack of a better word, garbage, were many. Surviving the dim years of the 1990s and crawling into the new millenni

Band: DEAD KOSMONAUT Title: Gravitas Label: High Roller Records Country: Sweden Release date: January 31, 2020 Format reviewed: (high-rate) mp3 promo To qualify DEAD KOSMONAUT's music on their forthcoming opus, "Gravitas", simply as heavy metal would be inaccurate. Admittingly, I was unaware of the band's previous offerings: debut full-length "Expect Nothing" (2017) and 2019's EP, "Rekviem". The day before yesterday I've played the promo for the upcoming album for the first t

Hard'N'Heavy - AOR - Glam Metal Far too long hard rock has been eclipsed by the more extreme offerings of the metal realm. For the past 25 (or so) years, hard rock (and mainly it's direct descendant, the glam metal) continued to take the bad rap for the decline of rock and metal in the music mainstream of the early to mid 1990s, and beyond. Whether you agree or not with this theory, here are ten new albums that bring further proof that #RockAintDead! 10. BLACKRAIN Dying Breed

Band: Bullet Title: Live Label: SPV/Steamhammer Country: Sweden Release date: July 5, 2019 Format reviewed: (double) vinyl LP It was about goddamn time a proper heavy metal double live album got released! As the time progressed, fewer and sparsely apart live albums graced the fans. Not all metal enthusiasts are content with live recordings. Personally, I prefer a solid recording of a band's most popular songs, in a live setting, rather than a "greatest hits/best of" compilati

The Forgotten Chapters of Rock & Metal … Part II - Hard Rock/Glam Metal Has been a few months now, since Part I of this article was published. As promised, a few of the bands named in the previous article made their way into this specifically curated new batch of ten albums. Same rules applied here as well: the featured efforts were either underrated or just plainly overlooked, at the time of their release, due to the circumstances already discussed in Part I. Many of the al

The “Phantom Hawk” arrives to enslave ancient Egypt! Here to tell the tale is Pulver, a German metal five-piece who batters like classic Tank and dazzles like early Iron Maiden. Just over a year after the release of their well-received self-titled debut EP, Pulver emerge with the Kings Under the Sand full-length, an album loaded with eight taut, memorable, but gritty classic metal cuts. Pulver’s career has been a domino effect: They formed in late 2016, recorded an EP barel

EMIL'S DEEP UNDERGROUND RECOS (part VI) As I was gathering information on all releases scouted on Bandcamp in the last two to three months, I've realized that the number of albums, or EPs, rightfully available for recommendations, was far greater than in the recent past. There were so many quality underground releases, across the genres, that a singular article, representing only ten titles wasn't gonna cut it! Not only there was enough quality for a standard edition of Strai

EMIL'S DEEP UNDERGROUND RECOS (part V) HARD'n'HEAVY Edition Well, well, well ... what do you know ... a HARD'n'HEAVY edition of Straight Outta Catacombs! Unfortunately, nowadays the softer side of metal and hard rock doesn't seem to be very underground popular, for lack of a better word. In fact, after I started researching Bandcamp for new and excited bands and releases that fitted the style, it became rather evident. So after digging, no, scratch that, excavating for a whil

Band: Zero Fire Title: Second Sun Label: Independent/Self-released Release date: March 22, 2019 Country: Canada Format reviewed: high-rate mp3 promo The modern hard-rock outfit ZERO FIRE hails from the Canadian port city of Hamilton in the Ontario province. The band released their self-titled debut EP in February 2015. Continuing to improve their presence on the local rock circuit, the band released the single “Ghost”, in October of 2017, a song that also made the cut for the

The Forgotten Chapters of Rock & Metal … Part I - Hard Rock/Glam Metal What we have here are ten hard-rock/glam-metal albums that were overlooked and/or underrated at the time of their original release, and despite the fact that they are all gems of the genre! Obviously, we’re pretty much just scratching the surface here, but it’s a start. Rather that just presenting the readers with the music only, I’ve decided to compile some facts about these bands and the by-gone tim

Band: Dangerous Curves Album: “So Dirty Right” Label: Independent Release date: April 6, 2018 Country: Australia Format reviewed: FLAC The Glam Metal (an integral part of Hard Rock) of the mid 80’s into the early 90s was at the time, a very well regarded rock/metal genre, receiving ample airtime on music TV and on dedicated FM radio stations across the globe. Glam Metal was then considered mainstream, and it’s popularity helped usher in many other rock/metal styles to the