Monday, September 19, 2016

Fire From The Gods: An American Blended Metal Band

Too many of these posts start out with me saying "As heard on Sirius XM Octane", but I listen to the station every day. Truly the station does a great job of promoting new and different bands. The band I'm going to write about today is one of their Accelerators bands.

Let me say this is a blog about music; not politics, but you would have to be living in a cave not to know about the unrest in our country. What this has to do with this band is that the group shows what's great about our country while singing about where we need to be better.

Fire From The Gods is a Hardcore/Metal band from Austin, Texas. Hardcore is not a style of Metal many Purists enjoy. I happen to enjoy it and there are some things that separate Fire From The Gods from the pack. First is what the songs are about and the singer delivering the messages.

AJ Ventor was born in the Bronx to a single mother from Jamaica. AJ's life has taken him around the world to settle in Texas. His voice, story and perspective is new to the Metal world. This is a great American blending of voices and styles that is one of great things our country had to offer.  AJ sings about what is still needed to bring the Promise of our great Nation to be.

For the music itself, the band is good. It is solid Hardcore with a great blending of Rap and even Reggae tones. The Accelerator single Excuse Me is a going to a hit on the Metal charts and a strong single to introduce the band.   Fire From The Gods is a band to check out

Til next time, listen to the best - your ears deserve it




Saturday, September 10, 2016

Still Ruling: Hard Rock House of Lords

This past week I fell done a Wikipedia hole. This happens every now and then. I was looking at an earlier post about Greg Giuffria of the band Giuffria, and remembered he had a follow up band House of Lords. My surprise was that this band from the late 80's was not only around but still recording. So off to ITunes I go.

The first thing I noticed is no Greg Giuffria. The amazing keyboard player is off and on in the lineup and is never a featured member.  Honestly, Greg's amazing keyboard playing was not featured as much on the first two releases as I would have liked. I guess the goal was sales and keyboards in a hard rock band is sometimes a hard sell. I enjoy the great keyboardist like Jon Lord of Deep Purple and would put Greg Giuffria on his level.

The next thing I noticed is that the sound is straight Arena Hard Rock. Very similar sounding to Joe Lynn Turner and Sunstorm. The lead singer James Christian has been the one constant in the band. A top notch vocalist that still delivers the growl and bombast that is needed for the arena Rock sound.

To find the band was still around and sounding like a Arena band was a great surprise. The 2015 release Indestructible is an appropriate title given the way the band has lasted the decades. If you are a fan of the late 80's Hard Rock sound it is a great listen.

Til next time listen to the best your ears deserve it.