Released By : Rock Star Records
Genre : Melodic Death Metal
Links : http://www.myspace.com/orpheusmetaloz
Tracklist:
01. Neath (The Shadow Of The Monolith)
02. Winds Of Change
03. Unscathed
04. Common Enemy
05. Face Of Vengeance
06. Societies Of Steel
07. Sealed In Fate
08. For All It’s Worth
09. A Thousand Times
10. Grin Of Madness
As a born & bred Aussie who has never actually been out of the country I have always tried to involve myself as much as possible in the Australian music scene and take great pride in introducing good Aussie bands to folks across the oceans. The last few years have been a very exciting time for Aussie metal music and bands like EYE OF THE ENEMY, BE’LAKOR and UNIVERSUM have been widely accepted abroad and have given the rest of the country’s metal bands the motivation to have a real go at getting out there. The latest band to start getting some recognition overseas is Melbourne based melodic death metal group ORPHEUS, and their debut album BLEED THE WAY has just been released via ROCK STAR RECORDS who were previously known as JUST SAY ROCK RECORDS.
The short and skinny of it is simple….This album kicks some serious ass and will surely put them firmly in the midst of international touring acts. I guess if you wanted to you could say that it’s not a whole lot different to a lot of the other melodic death metal released over the last five or six years, but ORPHEUS do it with such style and bravado that it all seems fresh again. For a start, the guitars here walk the line between melodic and brutal perfectly and bounce off the tight as all get up rhythm section as well as any other band I can think of. They also make good use of orchestral style keyboards, but occasionally emphasize them just a little bit too much. This is all topped off by one of the more capable death metal singers to come out of Oz for a long while and this bloke knows how to be absolutely brutal, but still keep enough composure to blend in with all of the melodic elements that are thrown around across the entire album
WINDS OF CHANGE, COMMON ENEMY and SEALED IN FATE are all jaw-droppingly good death metal tunes, but a special mention goes out to my personal favorite FACE OF VENGEANCE which is way less cheesier than what the title makes it sound. A few of the other songs on the album seemed a little too similar to one another to really excite me, but the four best tracks are amongst some of the strongest melodic death metal tunage I have heard in at least a good couple of years.
I hope ORPHEUS garner some international recognition from this album because at the moment they are still playing local venues for a handful of pocket change and they certainly deserve better than that. They have the added advantage of still being so young too which gives them plenty of time to mature and grow, so look out in the future because ORPHEUS are one of those bands that are only a whisper away from major respect and recognition.
Written By ZeeZee
Rating : 8/10
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