This leads me on to Dearly Beheaded. With their debut album Temptation they went along the roots of many a British metal band. Undecided on whether to go for the throat or to wrap us up in tight melodies the album sounded too flat to compete with the likes of Sepultura and too stuck in its ways to muscle in with Paradise Lost and cohorts. In fact it came out a little too old skool for comfort and while possessing some good moments it was a few years too late. Now it may be blasphemous but I feel on that occasion some of the blame lay with Colin Richardson's(Carcass, Machine Head, Napalm Death) production. The guitars weren't rough enough to pull off the required bone jarring sound. However Dearly Beheaded are back with Colin and a brand new album in the guise of Chamber of One.

Things get off to a good start with "A Thankless Task" with its new skool stuttering riff and brutal guitar sound redeeming Mr Richardson. "A Moment of Clarity" follows and while being no "Creeping Death" it keeps the album moving in that aggressive direction. The major change with this album is the move to a more rhythm based sound probably due to the introduction of a new guitarist, Darren Hough. Things stick to the bass heavy rhythm style throughout "The Escape" and the title track and it is here that the problems with the album start to appear. Yes it's heavy and yes it's modern but its also so damn repetitive that the songs lose any sense of individualism. Bands such as Machine Head may be heavy but they know that varying the pace and style of songs goes a long way to making their albums more enjoyable.

The latter half of the album is basically a dirge of heavy riffs with a serious lack of melody to hold it all together. The only song that stands out is the Voivoid cover, "Tribal Convictions", which is only recognisable due to its old skool thrash riffing. Dearly Beheaded are going in the right direction, they can write good tunes and have the attitude to pull it off, but they need to take more time preparing and writing their albums and possibly Alex Creamer should concentrate on varying his vocal delivery a little more. I can't really recommend you buy this album but if its a choice between this or guff such as Coal Chamber then give the DB guys a chance.

Rating: **********

[I reckon it's better than Graeme says, I love it, but there you go - Kevin]

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Gory Spice

Having enjoyed Sirrah's first album "ACME" immensly, I knew I was in for a treat when Kevin threw it's followup to me and said 'review it!!'

Sirrah are a seven piece atmospheric metal band with backgrounds in classical music. Their music is complex and textured, utilising the viola, keyboards, and vocals from four different people, as well as the traditional guitar and drums.

So, how have Sirrah changed since their last album? Well, for a start, more money seems to have been spent on the design of the CD inlay. The first album had a rather cheap-and-nasty looking inlay which appeared as if it has been knocked out quickly on someone's home computer. "Will Tomorrow Come?" has a much more sophisticated cover with a dramatically lit photograph of an ibex (I think -- I'm not really up on deer-type animals) alone in the desert, and some moody arty photos of the band members inside the inlay.

They're obviously going for a slicker image, which is reflected in the development of their music. It's become faster, more aggressive, and much heavier. Their crunchier guitars, creepier keyboards, gruffer vocals and more intends drumming make them sound far more like traditional Death and Doom metal bands than before.

The thing is that this maked them sound far less interesting and unique than the previous release, which was quirky, endearing, and even amusing at times, but was still powerful. "Will Tomorrow Come?" is a far more aggressive work with far less humour and only a couple of songs in the style of "ACME".

This is definitely worth listening to, but I recomment it's predecessor far more highly.

This is great fun! Put this on and you'll be bouncing round your living room, or at least tapping your feet if your a more sedate individual (if you're a sedate individual, what are you doing reading this?)

Rock and roll, man! Old-style. Spiritual Beggars are reminiscent of the innocence of the Seventies, but have a heavier modern edge. This is powerful and tight, while retaining the melodic quality metal had in the era of peace, love, spirituality and flares. They ain't scared of no tambourines keyboards and wah-wah.

There's a range of moods here. "Inside Charmer" is mellow and dark, sort of groovy, yet somehow strangely reminiscent of recent Paradise Lost; "Sad Queen Boogie" is just plain funky; "Send Me A Smile" is quintessentially Seventies and Zepellin-esque; "Cosmic Romance" is fairly aggressive rock and roll; and "Homage To The Betrayed" and "Monster Astronauts" are the kind of heavy-as-an-elephant-in-lead-boots rock 'n' roll the Entombed do.

If you truly appreciate good music, give this a listen. I guarantee you'll live it.

[I reckon they're a combination of Deep Purple, Entombed and Carcass. Really cool stuff. - Kevin]

As soon as I heard Dominion for the first time I know I wanted to get this album. The song which enticed me went by the name of "Joyful Tears Of Sorrow" (from the excellent compilation 'Under The Sign Of The Sacred Star') and it had a lot of promise. The guitar sound was excellent, although the actual riffing could have done with a little work; their female vocalist Michelle was also excellent on it. I thought this album would be basically an improved version of that song.

From the opening bars of the first track, 'Blackout', I could tell this wasn't going to be what I wanted or expected. Yeah OK, the style of music hasn't changed that much, and they've all but got rid of the more dodgy guitar riffs which sometimes scarred 'Joyful...', but at the expense of everything else. At many points it sounds very bare, with absolutely no depth, and you get basically one riff throughout large parts of each song. There's very little to differentiate the tracks. Michelle's vocals are absolutely gorgeous, but unfortunately are usually so far down in the mix you can hardly hear them.

In style, they are more stoner rock than riff-meister metal much of the time, although their sound doesn't pull off the stoner rock thing and I'm sure that's not what they're trying to do. I think they need a better idea of what they want to do. There aren't really any standout tracks, but there are sone excellent sections within some tracks, some vocal melodies which I love, and the odd really heavy bit. Unfortunately the production doesn't seem to work for all the different styles. The heavy tracks don't really seem to work (take 'Down' for example. Nowhere near as good as Unleashed's 'Down'!). 'Threshold' is possibly on of the better tracks, being heavy and having audible shouty vocals (Michelle does backing), and it doesn't seem to suffer from the disjointedness or same-riff-for-4-minutes problems of many of the tracks. In fact in style it's a mixture between early Paradise Lost riffing and Slayer eeriness.

I still think they have great potential. Just vary the riffs a bit more, turn up some of the vocals. and work on making all the vocal melodies as good as some of them are. They have a wonderful vocalist, they should make the most of her! All in all this seems to be quite a negative review but mainly because I'm sure they're capable of much more. I guess time will tell...

'Magic Carpet' is just relentless style from start to finish. 'Sarumans Wish' is your more mellow Sabbath type song, with most excellent riffs, a great middle section paying tribute to the great but much under appreciated Dying Sun, some cool, if not difficult, drumming, and brilliant lead / rhythm interaction (and yes Iceman, even keyboards!).

'Song Of The Purple Mushroom Fish' is a 152 second drugged out stoner-fest with no rhythm, drums or vocals: just chill. 'Aquatic Fanatic' is an excellent get-drunk-and-mosh effort. 'Lothlorian' is another one-and-a-bit-minute long song suspiciously reminiscent of Metallica's 'Nothing Else Matters' / 'The Unforgiven' and Sabbath's 'Laguna Sunrise', but who cares: it sounds cool!

I dunno what else to say about this, but if anything I have said sounds remotely interesting to you, please go out and buy this. It's one of the very few albums I'd recommend so strongly.