Eternal Reign - Forbidden Path (2005)

Cost: $1.00

I'm a total sucker for bands doing old metal cover songs.  Whether it's an oft-covered classic or something more obscure, I'm usually very curious about hearing it, and more often than not it makes me have a positive bias towards a disc without even hearing it.  That was the case when I saw Eternal Reign had covered Breaker.

 

The band play solid but unremarkable melodic power metal, somewhat like Symphorce perhaps.  I hear sparse hints of Angra, and there are some points (such as "Into My Own Hands") where the band sounds they're doing a more power metal take on Ripper-era Priest.  I've seen some reviews that overemphasize the progressive elements here--while there are some atmospheric and slightly progressive touches as well as some relatively light keyboard usage, it seems hardly enough to warrant any sort of progressive descriptor.   It's personally disappointing because I wanted (and with the Breaker cover, expected) the overall album to have stronger traditional metal influences, and they just aren't there.

 

The cover of "Ten Seconds In" is pretty good, but truth be told, I'm not a huge fan of the original apart from the chorus.  I suppose the idea of a band covering Breaker was more appealing than the actual cover ends up being.   Nothing wrong with this musically and it's fine as a dollar disc, but unfortunately they are a fairly generic sounding band in a category that's already far too crowded.

Sothis - De Oppresso Liber (2008)

Cost: 99¢

Wrongly assumed this would be some sort of black/death when I bought it--between the style of the cover art and my brain automatically associating the band name with the Vader EP, I guess I had false expectations of some death metal element here (and I didn't look through the booklet until after buying it, so I missed all the corpsepainted band photos).  Instead this is rather bland and uninspired attempt at '90s-early '00s Emperor/Dimmu style symphonic black metal.

The riffs are quite generic and forgettable.  The constant blastbeats and double-bass pedals in the drumming quickly become extremely monotonous.  Vocals are fine, and the keyboards are played well, but only fill out the songs with background melodies rather than providing any true atmosphere.   It does seem somewhat overproduced (which isn't entirely unexpected given the type of BM they play), but it seems rather wasted on the monotonous music, and there's much more at fault here than a sterile production.  There are a couple instances with some unexpectedly good soloing, but I seem more drawn to these just as monotony breakers in the guitarwork than anything really exemplary in the music.  Despite my criticisms, considering this is a blog about bargain bin CDs, this does fine in meeting my personal quality expectations for a dollar disc.  But I don't really see myself listening to it again.

Oh yeah, I must point out that the drummer's stage name is "Dross."  C'mon guys, why didn't you make it easy on yourselves...

Pain Principle - Waiting for the Flies (2007)

Cost: 99¢

To be fair, this wasn't quite as bad as I was expecting musically. I had prepared myself for straight up groove metal, and there is indeed some of that, but there's a huge amount of melodeath influence, and some modern thrash as well.  Still, with all the modern influences, this is sadly closer to melodeath-influenced metalcore than anything from Gothenburg in the '90s.  On the other hand, the vocals are what I initially feared--Anselmo aggro style.