kawazu@jabber.ccc.de 
48874445 
Really enjoyed listening to Antarhes' stuff... Given that at the moments the world of "darker" music is nothing short of bands featuring heavy guitars and female lead vocals, musicians have to be rather good to excel from this mass of average bands. Antarhes, fortunately, do manage to do so, and somehow managed to create music somewhere all in between Nightwish, Within Temptation, Elis, Evanescence and a bunch of other bands, and yet remaining original, inspired and highly energetic. A rather strong band, leaving the rather limited playing time possibly the only bad thing about "Breathin again"... Well done, folks.
... I like the mix of different styles and musical concepts represented on this album, even though being generally a little "darker". Though personally (even being German) I don't that much like music featuring German lyrics, I think some of the songs on here sung in German are pretty good. Sound quality and songwriting is rather exceptional in most cases, and this album also has a bunch of real "highlights" to offer ("Brainwashing" being my favorite so far). More of that, por favor. :)
What Al Azred do on their debut CD is quite impressing. Actually, the fact that playing time is rather short is the only "bad" thing to mention about this release, but then again, given that quite some influential metal albums didn't excel at being "long-players", this probably is okay. What else to note? Well, "Suicide" somehow reminds me of Slayers "South Of Heaven", but, besides that, it seems Al Azred did most if not all just right on "Symphony For A Psychosis". Tracks like "Mental Ascetism", "Annihilated Brain" or "Devils Wrath" are to provide straight, powerful death-metal, both old-school and inspired, technically performed extremely well and, with a fairly good songwriting, goin' beyond most of the death-metal stereotypes. I'm sure this sort of music will perfectly work out while listened to extremely loud or even in a live situation. I like it.
Listening to ARAI in a very pleasant way reminded me of those sunny days of my youth when I spent week by week with music by bands like Helloween, Running Wild, Judas Priest or Accept. To me, this seems right the kind of music ARAI are about to do, and the fact that they're some decades late in that style doesn't change their music to the worse. They do melodic, intense heavy metal in the best meaning of the words, driven forth by powerful drumming, melodic guitar lines and vocals that do express a very original, rough singing style (which really is effective in conjunction with the Spanish lyrics).
Overally, "SOCIEDAD ENFERMA" is not an album to reinvent any musical genre or style, but it's just an enjoyable piece of music listening to. These guys know what they do, and they know how to build effective songs that just emit power without sounding too much "old-school" or oldfashioned. If metal is on your musical menu, then ARAI is some band you surely should check out - I'm curious to see how they'll move on, how their next releases will sound like.
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