Metal Reviews

But the band is awesome. Check out Gaia Epicus. Holy crap I was blown away when I heard "Fire and Ice" off of SATRAP.

http://www.gaia-epicus.com/mp3/Gaia%20Epicus%20-%20Fire%20&%20Ice.mp3

Didn't their bass player die or something?

:shock: I don't know. I just found out about them.

I'm pretty sure he pranged his car against something.

Poor guy.

http://www.gaia-epicus.com/history.html

02.03.05 Yngve Hanssen (bass player) dies in car crash.



Damn that does suck.

Actually, reading through there history, they've has a pretty rough road. I hope they get some more recognition in the future.

Turns out I have two of their songs on my hard drive, one of which is this "Fire & Ice" you speak of. I'll give them a listen as soon as the album I'm currently spinning (as much as you can spin an mp3) finishes.

Edit: Quite impressed. The song Fire & Ice is definitely the better of the two they give away on the website. Sort of reminds me of old Nocturnal Rites (maybe that's because of the song title) and that single Rennaissance song.

Gaia Epicus have a second album Symphony of Glory, which imo is much worse than their debut.
Satrap had some good, catchy Gamma Ray style songs, but most were too unoriginal and plain boring.Their vocalist sucks as well as the production and as a result the music lacks any punch to it.Even with all this I rated it 68 because the guys show some talant.If they could improve on the vocals and songwriting and stop copying from Gamma Ray, they might some day record a killer album.
I would rate Symphony of Glory about 50-55.More of the copy-paste job, nothing really worth to mention.

When I first heard this song a couple of months back I thought it sounded familiar. Try listening to this song and Stratovarius - Hunting High And Low...

:roll:

*takes a deeeeeeep breath*

I'm sorry but I absolutely and completely despise this band with all of my heart and have been doing since just recently (which is why I even bother with a long post like this). This band is total crap. Totally generic and entirely lifted songwriting, boring sound and a vocalist that can't sing for shit. "Fire & Ice" is an extremely poor rip-off Stratovarius's "Hunting High & Low", except nowhere near as good. "When Fire Melts! MELTS! Theeeeeeeee Ice!", yeah really great chorus you have there, guys. Basically, this band's formula consists of taking Gamma Ray and Stratovarius and stripping away character, personality and anything that was ever good about those bands. Anytime they get something going it's so blatantly ripped off some other band that it loses all enjoyability, especially with their poor and unimaginative execution of things.

Quite honestly, I can't believe bands like this even get signed these days, or much less have a dedicated fan site! This band is just a pure embarrassment. I have absolutely no idea what it is that anyone could see in them.

EDIT: Actually, let's be a bit productive here...I just came across a really cool band called Black Destiny. Staying on topic, this band's production is pretty low-budget, but the songwriting is really cool and far more original and interesting (well the vocals are derived from Matt Barlow, but anyway). Let's for all that is good hope for more bands like these and less bands like this Hellovarius or whatever.

http://www.black-destiny.de/

Well I guess I could put it that way as well but I wasn't feeling mean at the moment when I replied to this post. It's just that when a band writes lyrics like this:


bashing them feels like beating up a child might feel.

Oh and I just have to post these lyrics as well

Holy holy fuck!!!

Wow! A lot of hatred. I like how Pyroman put it. This band is capable of so much more. BTW I did hear "Symphony of Glory" and it does indeed suck. But I read on there website that they were practically forced to release something, or something along those lines.

I would actually rate Satrap 72/100. The production is really crappy, but the guitarist is still wonderful. He didn't do much editing on his sound, so what you hear on the record, is what you would hear in person. The singer does suck, but I think he fits their crappy production sound. That may sound silly to say, but I'm a sucker for matching vocals with music style.

BTW, Black Destiny sounds alright. "Tragedy Vision's" opening riff sounds exactly like Cellador's "Leaving all Behind."

As I remember it they had troubles about the song order with their previous label Sound Riot.It seemed they changed the order without asking the band, which in any case i doubt it had a big impact on music quality.

Oh. Well then it just plain SUCKS!!!

Still I recommend checking out "Satrap" to those who haven't.

I downloaded this album....well yonks ago now. Probably just after it came out. I too am disappointed with it. A few songs had some decent moments, but yes production and sometimes the vocals had me pressing the stop button. Eventually i just deleated the files.
The star wars track is not bad, for a star wars fan that is. I did like the "Imperial March", guitar style during the song.

They do have potential i must say, but i think they need to go with a different and more recognised label, not sure if they are still with Soundriot.

Ouch. That was painful.

I sometimes wonder how Blind Guardian doing a similar job on Lord of the Rings actually churned out a great song.

http://www.roadrunnerrecords.com/blabbe ... emID=45085


This makes me like the band less. Looks like their debut is as good as they get.

That song is pretty good ~ sorta a mix between Attack and Gamma Ray.

the verse is ok.

i really hate that chorus

im not much of a power fan though so my opininion is basicly moot.