Nostalgia can be very dangerous in the wrong hands - it’s fine to acknowledge a time in musical history or a band’s legacy in your own music, but to want to resurrect that sound, scene, and style as it was with no changes is quite frankly moronic. Denied know this, and thankfully have avoided sounding like a tribute band to the gods of 80’s metal.
Sure you can easily pick out the influence of Iron Maiden, Gamma Ray, and Helloween in most of the songs here. But Denied have set about constructing their own legacy instead of trying to resurrect those of their idols. The result is a raw produced, almost Punky mix of NWOBHM, Power Metal, and even Hardcore.
‘The Dawn’ opens with a slow pseudo-operatic build up into the title track ‘…When The Slate Becomes Diamonds’ - sounding like something off Maiden and Priest’s debut albums in it’s production style, it sounds heavy and so unlike all those highly polished imitators that you have to take notice. ‘Denied’ has a nice hardcore underbelly to it, like Helloween meets an early AFI, and interesting combination that might make you struggle to imagine what I mean, but it works, and it works well here. ‘The Waste Remains and Kills’ has a nice ‘tuning the radio’ intro to it before getting into the maiden-a-like riff, but rather than walking that path exclusively there remains that punky edge as heard previously. ‘Ride to the Land of the Machine Guns’ tries to make itself sound bigger than it is, but for some reason falls short of it’s target - in theory it is a good song with it’s Judas Priest guitars, and Hardcore drumming, coupled with some lung tearing vocals, but it just doesn’t have the kick of the other tracks. ‘Before Then After Later’ is a strange beast - sounding like AFI if they switched their obsession from The Cure to Power Metal, its another one that works against your expectation and succeeds. ‘Horrorama’ is very Helloween, fast, big vocals, and those dual guitars really driving the song - My only criticism would be that Steffano Bottario does some strange impression of a music hall singer at the beginning of the track… But for what effect I can’t say. ‘Quest for Deliverence’ opens with a strong bass line, but other than that, it tends to retread old ground. The penultimate track ‘Circle of Fire’ is a great piece of Heavy Metal song writing, with a strong intro, an unexpected time change, and great vocal performance it is just hard to fault. To round off the album is ‘Bearers of the Slate’, a track that is aiming for epic statements that unfortunately is held back by the production style that otherwise gives this album its character.
As far as Heavy Metal bands go these days, these guys are not your typical misty eyed, yearning for the glorious 80’s band. They instead take their influences from the glory days of NWOHMB, Power Metal, and Hardcore and do their own thing with it. That in itself is nice and refreshing, but the actual songs that are born as a result display a great deal of talent. One to check out if you like good Heavy Metal.
http://www.denied.it
http://www.myspace.com/denieditaly
