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Assisting Sorrow
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| By
Jonathan Mariante
This CD is a combination
of Assisting Sorrow's '99 promo and their '98
demo, plus a cover of King Diamond's "The Invisible Guests".
This band
combines elements of traditional, progressive, thrash, and death metal,
and they do quite a good job of it. The music is melodic and powerful,
thrashing at times, and on some songs they also use classical-style
guitar and keyboards. In fact, three members are keyboard players, but
they don't overuse them, the way some bands do; the keyboard use is kept
to a minimum on this album. There are also two vocalists; Mike Barnes on
"growls", who also plays keyboards, and guitarist/second
keysman Chris
Leffler on "clean vocals" (Chris is also the chief songwriter)
These
guys are quite talented (Chris is a very good guitarist), they play
solid metal, and the different styles of metal they use gel quite
well. Their music packs a punch, and the album thrashes out from start
to finish! One song that stood out for me was the title track, which
starts off like a ballad with classical guitar and "clean"
singing from
Chris, then kicks into gear for the second half, with Chris and Mike
swapping vocal duties back and forth, singing in their respective
styles, which makes for a good contrast between the two. As I mentioned
earlier, the album contains a cover of King Diamond's "The
Invisible
Guests", which is unlisted and closes the album. They do a good job
covering this King classic, too. I think they do His Dark Majesty
justice! These guys are a good band, they have their own style, and
they're METAL! That's enough to get my seal of approval!
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