For all the newfangled sounds and current bands I’ve been getting into as of late, I’m always going to be an old-school kind of guy at heart. It’s as much a vibe-thing as it is anything to do with songwriting or production. So, when I had my first chance to listen to “
Beyond The Iron Portal,” the newest release by France’s
MANZER, I couldn’t help but smile at the band’s unabashedly retro style. A prolific recording band since their inception in 2008, the group has been featured on a number of splits, live albums and EP’s, though “
Beyond…” marks just their second full-length offering.
Black, Thrash, and traditional Heavy Metal collide as the trio pummel their way through the battlefields of imagination their songs create. There is a clear love for all of the tropes that classic Heavy Metal,
especially NWOBHM, embodies, from the “brutal” cover art to the song titles themselves, and that is just a prologue to the actual music. The band lay the melodies on thick from the start with the instrumental “
Open The Portal,” and then step it up a notch further as “
Torment of the Strix” kicks off with even more wailing, electrified lead work before seamlessly transitioning to a rougher, yet still cohesive variation of the main melody, backed by furious riffing and eardrum-battering drums.
The overall effect can be likened to some weird, bastard child of
VENOM and “
Show No Mercy”-era
SLAYER…and it’s really quite a lot of fun. You get the harsh,
Cronos-like growls along with the delightful Tom Araya highs (think of the opening to “
Angel Of Death”). There may not be a lot to joke about as far as horrible, irradiated death goes, but songs like the frenetic “
Nuclear Necropolis” and “
Veisalgia Damnation” are too upbeat and energetic to take
too seriously, let alone tracks like the wonderfully-named “
Semen Goddess” (!). While the songs themselves are straightforward structure-wise,
MANZER never feel like they’re forcing themselves to sound like a band that wandered out of a mystic portal from the faraway time of 1985.
Some people might prefer more music that’s heavier in spirit as well as instrumentation (shout-out to you harsh noise-lovers out there), but “
Beyond The Iron Portal” is definitely worth a listen for those who enjoy fast-paced, high-spirited music that also pulls no punches in the heaviness department.
Songwriting: 7
Originality: 7
Memorability: 7
Production: 8