Sonic Cathedral’s female-fronted roundup for Q4, 2015 – Part 1

Since I’ve been snarled up in other matters since the end of September I haven’t been posting our monthly digest of Sonic Cathedral reviews. To catch up, today and tomorrow I’ll be posting a two-part digest covering the last three months of this year.

My heartiest thanks go to SC for being patient. The same to you lovely, gentle people who follow Metal State.

If you don’t know it already, SC runs the website and Facebook page for bands with female vocalists. The SC reviews are deep, detailed and knowledgeable. They carry a lot of other great information about the FF scene in metal and rock, too. Go there!

 

Sonic Cathedral’s female-fronted roundup for July

Our friends at Sonic Cathedral reviewed three albums in July. Two of the albums are hard rock and the third album is as much hard rock as metal. Accordingly, all three albums feature powerful, clean female vocals, considerable melody in the compositions, and plenty of driving beat and oomph.

Sonic Cathedral’s website and Facebook page focus mainly on metal with female vocalists. However, they also cover many types of rock. The SC July selections show how comfortably hard rock and heavy metal go hand-in-hand. SC is a great destination for fans, performers and promoters of what has become known as female-fronted metal and rock.

Sonic Cathedral’s female-fronted roundup for June

Our thanks go again to our buddies at Sonic Cathedral for sharing their reviews of female-fronted albums with us. Since we don’t review a great number of albums of the type that Sonic Cathedral does, our monthly digest of their reviews covers a lot of musical territory.

Like Metal State, Sonic Cathedral usually selects which albums to review from the dozens and sometimes hundreds released every month. As a result, their reviews cover the best of the best. They choose their material so well that Sonic Cathedral is widely recognised as the site for FF fans, bands and labels.

They reviewed eight albums during June. Here’s a brief look at all of them. Women have been at the heart of music for thousands of years, and it’s gratifying to note how many women continue to be supreme performers in every genre I can think of.

 

Roundtable Review: Lancer – Second Storm

Label: Despotz Records

Release Date:  April 10th, 2015

Songs:  9

Length: 51 minutes

Genre:  Power/Speed metal

Studio Albums: Purple Sky EP 2012, Lancer 2013

Location:  Arvika, Sweden

Recommended for fans of: Iron Maiden, Avantasia, Helloween, Edguy

Sonic Cathedral’s female-fronted roundup for January

One of our innovations for 2015 is an alliance with Sonic Cathedral, the website that specialises in reviews of albums by female-fronted bands. Collectively, the Sonic Cathedral team is probably the best team of experts in the world on the types of female-fronted music we at Metal State don’t cover too often, notably symphonic metal and Gothic metal. SC covers a lot more ground than that, however, featuring FF albums in various genres of rock and harder metal as well.

We’ll be presenting a highlights roundup of the Sonic Cathedral reviews every month. Our coverage will include the album details, an intro from SC, and a link to the full (and often extremely comprehensive) review on SC’s website.

Album Review: Lord Dying – Poisoned Altars

Album:  Poisoned Altars

Release Date:  27 Jan 2015 (US); 23 & 26 Jan 2015 EU and World

Label:  Relapse

Songs:  8

Length:  37 Minutes

Genre:  Sludge / Doom / Metal!

Sounds Like:  Crowbar / Mastodon / High On Fire / Red Fang / Black Tusk

Location:  Portland, OR USA

Roundtable Review: Kobra and the Lotus – High Priestess

Label:  Titan

Release Date:  24 Jun 2014

Songs:   10

Length:  45 Minutes

Genre:  Just Heavy Metal

Studio Albums:   This is their 3^rd studio album

Location:  Canada

Mammal’s 21-Year Hit Parade: 2002 / #15 – #13

Another week, another metal year. This time machine is fun. I’ll have to buy one. At the end of my year-by-year hit parades I have to give this one back to Hertz Era Hire.

My 2002 kicks off with folk black, heavy and melodic power metal.

 

Roundtable Album Review: Johnny Touch – Inner City Wolves

Label: Shadow Kingdom Records

Release Date: 19 August, 2014

Songs: 8

Length: 38 minutes

Genre: Heavy Metal

Studio Albums: This is their debut album

Location: Australia

 

Mammal’s 21-Year Hit Parade: 1995 / #6 and #5

Dark Metal Cat says I should post only the intro to my hit parade stuff on the home page and put the songs on a turn-page so that (a) I don’t use up the first three screens of the home page and (b) he can be on the home page.

I had 1995’s #10 and #9 yesterday. I am not skipping #8 and #7. I did them last week by mistake because of solar flares and asteroid belts and the Oort Cloud and such phenomena.