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Frontiers [Release date 12.05.23]
While not immediately lovable, Italy’s Metal monsters, Screamachine’s second album, Church Of The Scream inexorably works its way under your skin. And remains there.
So, get your headphones on and say a prayer.
They band hit their stride on this, their second album. The songwriting is stronger, more cohesive overall, and there’s an overriding confidence running through these grooves. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts. And the parts are impressive.
‘The Crimson Legacy’ takes off like a high speed train, although the ride is maybe a bit less comfortable. Perhaps because of the sneering, screaming vocals, but tongues are firmly in cheek here. It’s not parody metal, it’s too good for that. It’s knowing, perceptive speed metal, encouraging us to read between the lines.
As it switches and sways through almost 50 minutes of old school metal, you can hear echoes of Accept, Priest, Savatage in the ramped up, relentless twin guitar attack of axemen Edoardo Taddei and Paulo Campitelli. Most especially on ‘Occam’s Failure’, ‘Pest Case Scenario’ and ‘Methadone’, where they seem determined to prove that all roads lead to an anthemic chorus.
‘Night Asylum’ and ‘Revenge Walker’ scrub the music clean of much of its metal dressing. At their core, both are fine hard rock songs, not a million miles away from Motley Crue / Alice Cooper mashups.
Occasionally they’ll vary the speed and tempo to maintain our attention – ‘Flag Of Damnation’ and ‘Deflagator’ burn a little more slowly yet flare brightly at the just right times.
If a little more theatrical, the wonderfully titled ‘The Epic Of Defeat’, perfectly tailored to Valerio Caricchio’s animated vocals, closes the album in the manner to which we’ve become accustomed.
They aren’t reinventing the genre here, but they’re renovating it with style. ***1/2
Review by Brian McGowan
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