Heavy Justice - Apocalyze

Heavy Justice

Apocalyze

by Lex Mishukhin at 26 January 2014, 2:00 PM

HEAVY JUSTICE, no, it's not an 80's pro wrestler, it's a Californian Heavy Metal band releasing its full length debut album, "Apocalyze". Zombies anyone? As the cover, name and intro suggest, the undead are at work here.

So what's it all about? You may ask yourself, well, it's old school Thrashed up Heavy Metal. As obvious by the opening title track, the album is a bit of a mash up of Heavy Metal with late 80's styled Thrash, and it works perfectly well, the opener title track and the follow up "Iron Hand" are adequate but unspectacular. However once we reach "When We Were Gods" is where things start getting interesting, an intro played on the piano, interesting layered vocal melodies, female vocals and a slower and deliberate pace make this the first stand out, showing a great potential. "I'm Home" continues the line begun on the previous track, opening melodically and slowly then heading into and infectious and heavy riff, and slowing down again later leading into a galloping rhythm leading to the slow and melodic ending.

The band seem to be handling longer songs far better than shorter ones, allowing themselves the freedom of pace changes and better performance. This album shows a lot of potential, despite the first two songs and the closing track "Fuel Into The Fire" being standard to the point of boredom, the rest of the album shows off some original material, interesting writing and a lot of future potential.

This is a debut, a good, but not great debut, but these guys have a ton of potential, and I'll certainly be looking forward to hearing what they do next.