Customer Reviews

Metal Machine

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For those who liked Helloween with Michael Kiske on lead vocals - this album is for you. You can also here a little Iron Maiden, lots of Hammerfall, and a little Rhapsody in their sound. Great cover and great metal album!!

This is the sort of honest traditional metal music that should grace every headbangers shelf. The album comprises ten tracks of warm, well produced and well executed metal. Nothing more, nothing less. The gist of things here is the thumping drum sound combined with the full faucet guitar attack. Quite how the band would be able to pull this off live I'm not sure but when the whole thing is fronted by Jakob Samuel who seems to combine some heft to his vox with the ability to inflect up into the higher registers to good effect while at the same time he seems to have a somewhat whisky soaked tinged to his voice during the times he isn't hitting those high notes. And it's this quality to his voice that helps centre the band so well right into the middle of the trad metal genre.

Stand out tracks you should perhaps try to check out would be... well it's hard to say such is the consistency of everything that's going on here but I'd recommend Dungeons of Steel and Metal Machine. But just a cursory glance at the track listing will probably tell you what the songs sound like and in this case I'd have to rate that as a compliment.

With a somewhat catching cover, nice enough booklet that has some good and bad moments this is a release well worth your trad metal dollar. A true highway album - this is the sort of album that will get your car moving faster on the highway. What more excuse do you need?

"Metal Machine" is the 4th and latest to date studio album by Swedish melodic metal band "Midnight Sun" originally released in 2001. The album was to feature an all star line-up by today's standards including singer Jacob Samuels ("The Poodles", ex-"Talisman"), guitarist Magnus Karlsson ("Primal Fear", "Starbreaker") drummer Jamie Salazar along with founder bassist Jonas Reingold.

Unquestionably "Metal Machine" would come to be the heaviest album this band ever produced, clearly directed towards melodic metal (as the title suggests) rather than hard rock. For that matter the album draws strongly upon `Judas Priest's sound and themes; essentially they attempt to mix their own melodies and instrumentations with tempos and riffs that undeniably bring to mind the great British band.

It has to be said that all members have managed to cope admirably with the shift in direction. Jacob Samuels in particular uses high-pitched on a good number of tracks and although far from his characteristic style, he proves effective and convincing. For Magnus Karlsson, as most are aware, there is nothing too difficult to play, so he naturally adapts to the musical direction while his lead guitar parts remain as inventive as ever. Favorite songs include "Temple of the Graal", "Steel to steel", "Metal machine" and "Distorted eyes".

Overall "Metalmachine" proved another great addition to the "Midnight Sun" catalogue effectively reinventing the style of the band which would evolve from album to album.