| Behind The Veil |
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| Saturday, 18 September 2004 15:50 | |||
 Ok, Thessaloniki might not have the most fanatic crowd in the heavy/power metal genre (extreme metal dominates everything here) but the few bands of this branch that exist, do a wonderful job. Now, it was time for Out Of The Lair to surprise me with their debut album. To begin with the artwork and the whole cd is so perfectly and carefully set that has nothing to be jealous of albums released by labels. It won't be an exaggeration to say that it's by far better than most label releases. The cd also included multimedia metarial that will make you stick on your PC for many hours. Enough with the extra material and let's get to the main part of this review, which is the band's music of course. Out Of The Lair had the chance to play quite many live shows and gained experience that is obvious in their compositions. You see except for the self title song "Out Of The Lair" that brings to your mind RUNNING WILD's "Port Royal", the rest of the songs have a very personal sound, which makes it hard for the listeners to understand the band's influences. So, I'll take my chances and I'll name a few bands that according to me offered inspiration to these guys...bands like DESTINY'S END, RUNNING WILD (mentioned them right above), HELLOWEEN (early period), METALLICA, BLACK SABBATH and RAGE. The voice of Spiros has improved a lot. They also spice up their music with some progressive and death metal elements that make the final result more interesting. In the song "Psychotears" you can hear Sakis Tolis of ROTTING CHRIST singing. Ending, the production is good, but I think it could have been a bit more dynamic. The cd costs only 8 Euros plus postage and you can order it from the band. I think the price is very cheap for what you will get and for this increible work!!! rate: 8.5/10 Nick "William_Kidd" Parastatidis
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