Karma, hailing from Egypt, is a band with exceptional talent… But will their talent earn them the throne for Egypt’s Most Metal Underground Band?

Starting off, we got hold of Karma’s first album, ‘Actions In Previous Existence.’ It contains 8 very uniquely written metal tracks with a conscience of hard rockiness.

Vocal work varies from singing to short bursts of growling. Although we truthfully feel that the singing doesn’t blend too well with the louder riffs, the growling certainly does. So we have to give them that.

The drummer is legit. His beats and rhythms definitely embed a sensation of solidness.  We really enjoyed Karma’s guitar solos. These guys are legends at those.  Sometimes just skipping to the solos when you don’t feel like music, are enough to reel you in for the rest.

They definitely have the potential to go a lot heavier than what they currently are.  Most songs have more of a hard-rock feel to it, but the quality of this album’s mixing overrides that as they switch from chilled to heavy.

Oh and by the way, nice Backstreet Boys cover!  Yet, it would sound better if they cranked up the heaviness a bit more.  They can go much heavier and we’d dig to see that!

Headbang Today’s rating: 7/10 metal horns!

Final Score: 8/10

Right headbangers, give us your own ratings!

Slipknot lead singer Corey Taylor weeps at a press conference where band members paid tribute to bass player Paul Gray, who died in an Iowa hotel.

The surviving members of the heavy metal band Slipknot made a rare appearance Tuesday without their trademark masks to pay tribute to their bassist, Paul Gray, who was found dead Monday at an Iowa hotel.

At a news conference in Des Moines, The Associated Press reported, the band’s lead singer, Corey Taylor, said: “Yesterday we lost our brother, and the world seems a little smaller because of it. He had the biggest heart of anyone I’ve ever known. The only way I can sum up Paul Gray is love.”

The body of Mr. Gray, who was 38, was found by an employee of the TownePlace Suites in Johnston, Iowa. Sgt. Dave Disney of the Urbandale police told The A.P. that the employee had gone to Mr. Gray’s room after a relative called the hotel and asked that someone check on him after having been unable to reach him by phone.

Autopsy results released on Tuesday were inconclusive. Gregory Schmunk, the medical examiner for Polk County, said it could be four to six weeks before results from toxicology tests are available.

Slipknot has been on a yearlong hiatus; its last studio album, “All Hope Is Gone,” went to No. 1 on the Billboard chart after its release in 2008.

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Our thoughts are with Paul’s family, friends as well as Slipknot. Paul Gray will never be forgotten for what he has done and created with the band – Scream

A symphonic / power metal band from Cairo, Egypt. The band incorporates many elements of symphonic, metal & rock music into their music, the beautiful blend is mind-blowing with both energy of electric guitars riffs and chops and beauty of different orchestral & instrumental arrangements. – Or so they say… we’ll be the judges of that!

With Sworn To Silence seizing the throne for South Africa’s Most Metal Underground band, we now shift our focus to yet another African metal band, Varden! Will they become Egypt’s Most Metal?

Their first track, ‘Building My Love’ already gave us the inside scoop on what we can expect from these dudes. With beautiful melodic guitar picking and a nice blend of piano melodies gives Varden that awesome ‘Nightwish’-like feel to it. The song shifts from a calm before the storm to an actual storm of decent heavy metal drama. The guitar solo thereof is also superb.

Viking metal to its finest… yet the vocal work is quite monotonous in the sense that we would’ve treasured a screaming variety perhaps? We’re huge fans of instrumental metal nonetheless and the double bass is something that definitely gets us going.

One thing is for certain. I would dig to see them live. I can only imagine solid headbanging right through!

Our favourite track would definitely be ‘Building My Love’ (even though it’s probably the only quality driven track we could get our hands on for now.)

HEADBANG TODAY’S RATING: 8/10

(9/10 FINAL SCORE)

Allright Headbangers! Give their tracks a listen above and give us your rating below!

Matricide ceased existence until life was drummed back into this grunge metal serpent, all thanks to their new drummer Marco! Now back from the dead, each band member is programmed to slaughter any gig or event that crosses their path (in a good way). All hail Matricide, Capetonian metallers on a mission to seek and destroy as they are equipped with pure South African metal talent!” – Scream (HeadbangToday.com)

By not having much material to write Matricide’s review on, it swiftly dawned upon us that this is a band that don’t need to have  a bucket load of material to convince us that they’re worthy of being in this competition. There are 3 contending bands from each country. Two of them were pure melodic metal groups that have the potential to reign supreme in the battle for the continent’s “Most Metal” throne… but then Matricide came along and entered themselves. They showed balls. They showed courage and best of all they showed Headbang Today that you don’t have to have crazy melodic guitar work and dark sounding riffs to be metal.

Matricide’s musical style is grungy, rapid, energetic and most importantly, reasonably heavy! Byron’s vocal performance brings an opulent variety to the table while talks with Marco (Matricide’s drummer), revealed that Armin (The guitarist) does a great deal of singing as well. Something we obviously don’t see in the attached video.

For those that regularly attend Capetonian gigs will definitely know who Matricide is. They’ve put up a number of shows in and around Cape Town and even made a tour to Port Elizabeth where they proudly displayed their talent and reaped appreciation from the headbangers up there.

Anyway, back to the review! Matricide rocks! They need to expose themselves a little bit more online though as they turn out to be one of those subliminal bands. Well, if they succeed towards the throne for Headbang Today’s Underground Kings… then the latter will be no problem for these dudes at all!

HEADBANG TODAY’S RATING: 7/10

Allright Headbanger’s! Give give us your rating below! (headbanger ratings close Thursday 29 April)

Sathern

Established in late 2006, Sathern finally took form after 3 years of relentless auditioning and various line-up changes that saw the band grow from a one-man project to a fully fledged band, incorporating the energy of fast drums, dual guitars and aggressive bass with the atmosphere of keyboards and a furious vocal attack.

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Sathern probably had one goal in mind upon starting the band and that was to dominate. Their music is exceptionally well driven and they are most probably South Africa’s best melodic metal band to date. But just how well will Sathern fare in our Underground Kings competition?

Unfortunately due to the absence of vocals in their material that is available online, we aren’t able to rate them on that, thus costing them a couple of rating points. As for their music, it’s very hard to believe that this is a South African band! Their brilliant instrumental tracks undoubtedly makes up for any points that they have lost. With solid metal rhythm and astounding guitar work mixed in with fairly awesome drumming, Sathern proves that South Africa does indeed have decent metal-driven talent!

Headbang Today’s rating: 7/10 metal horns!

Give us your rating below! (fan rating closes Monday 19 April)

Sworn To Silence

These dudes are a Bloemfontein-based, 5 piece metal band, consisting of Rohann Fraser (Guitar) Lourens Liebenberg (Guitar) Henno Strauss (Bass) Tienie de Koker (Vocals) Markus Jordaan (Drums). They were referred to us by a loyal headbanger. Soon we will all see whether these guys have what it takes to become Headbang Today’s Most Metal underground band!

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One minute into one of their Demo tracks called “Face The Demon” was all it took for Headbang Today to dig this band’s musical talent! The song is without any doubt nothing short of pure metal. With exceptional variety in vocal work and beautiful brain-scrambling guitar solos, Sworn To Silence doesn’t seem like they’ve sworn to anything just yet, let alone silence!

Fans of the clean metal genre would definately enjoy this band. One thing that is bothersome though, is the deep shouting singing. It doesn’t seem to blend well-enough with the music itself. But the high screetching screaming is awesome nontheless! With a couple of extra hours a day practicing, and Tienie will eventually give Dani Filth a run for his Euros!

One thing is for sure. We would DIG to see these dudes play live as well as see them release a full-length album soon!

Thoroughly enjoyed, well done!

Headbang Today’s Rating: 7/10 (8.2/10 Final Score)

Allright Headbanger’s! Give their tracks a listen above and give us your rating below!

Interview by Scream shizzle.

NP Projek are: Pierre “diePEER” Rossouw
Noulen “Moela” Basson

Bling-bling Today: Welcome to the ‘hood. Np Projek seem to be quite popular among the South African young uns. For those that don’t know what NP projek are about… feed them some info about yourselves and what you are about!

Np Projek:

We’re wannabe gangsters that’s got it all wrong. Our mission is to touch the hearts of puppies and kittens across the globe with our beautiful Afrikaans lyrics especially in songs like ‘Maagpyn’ and ‘Ow’. We don’t give a crap about genre, it’s commercial and NP Projek started to ripp off seriously lousy hits! Over the past year it changed a bit we started producing our own tracks and are currently working on a original album collaborating with a lot of big names in the Afrikaans industry. All we want is for people 2 lol when they l2m!!

Bling-bling Today: I noticed that you dudes have been gigging hardcore lately. What are your shows like and tell us about some of your best and worst gigs to date.

Np Projek:

We haven’t really had a worst gig but the best would probably be our first one with Jack Parow at Durbanville Kunskaffee – a Close second was the 27^th of March also with Jack Parow at Langebaan Kaktus, Sold Out show (Tickets and Bar),we even had local celebs like Jakkie louw,Arno Jordaan and Kurt Darren at the show!LOL Our gigs are mostly based on a party vibe, but we make complete fools of ourselves… well pretty much all the time. When the crowd jumps and sings with that’s enough for us do get more stupid then we are…

Bling-bling Today: Okay, I  know what goes down at a typical metal band’s jam session… as we’re crossing over, I now need to know what a typical NP Projek jam session consists out of. What goes down?

Np Projek:

Every song has different characters. For ‘Kraaibak 911’ we’re gangsters stealing cars, for ‘Betas’ we’re 2 moffies (homosexuals), for ‘Doom Doom Pow’ we’re homeless black people. So we need to get into character for every song. Then we pretty much act out our characters as we perform the song. We’ve jammed a couple of gigs and always have a lot of people that sing along but every experience is different. You never know what to expect. Once we’re in character though, it’s difficult to get out. We’ve got some sort of multiple personality disorder… Especially Moela, He has it even when we just hang out.

Bling-bling Today: Why do you think ex gangsters who can’t sing always end up becoming more famous than a rockstar that used to sacrifice human beings? What is it in hip hop that pulls fans in like flies around a turd? It can’t possibly be the shitty lyrics?

Np Projek:

Huh? We enjoy walks on the beach… no no wait… how can you expect us to answer that? World peace… there, that always works on TV.

Bling-bling Today: Well, you dudes are known for your humorous lyrics and to-the-T-covers. Who writes the lyrics?

Np Projek:

We have a monkey that we caught fly fishing in Alaska about 2 years ago that we shaved and taught English. He writes the lyrics and then we translate it to Afrikaans. Works like a charm, but he’s an alcoholic the poor bastard. So we pay him in cough syrup…

Bling-bling Today: Is there any method behind your madness?

Np Projek:

Yes.we catch little spiders and dry them in the sun. Grind them into a fine powder and snort it..almost like cocaine. Its nice..you should try it.

Bling-bling Today: Pass me a straw… When can fans expect a full-track album from NP Projek?

Np Projek:

We’ll launch a 5 track original EP asap. Full track album with parodies won’t be released anytime soon. It’s a bitch to get publishing rights on the lyrics.

Bling-bling Today: Ever considered doing a collaboration with one of South Africa’s finest heavy/black/death metal acts? If so, which band would you dig to do it with?

Np Projek:

We have considered it, If we need to it would probably be a band we enjoyed when we were younger and jammed with them. I think we’ll go for Jurie Else or Bok van Blerk…

Bling-bling Today: HAHA! Do you think that the headbangers would’ve read this far into the interview before they realised that Bling-Bling Today was just an April Fool’s stint?

Np Projek:

WHAT?? This is a stint?

CHECK OUT NP PROJEK! They are exactly what some of our headbangers need to forget about the vomit that typical hip-hop bands often leave behind in our mouths!

Roadrunner Records is extremely pleased to congratulate our artists who are nominated for the second annual Revolver Golden Gods Awards
this year!

Rob Zombie, whose Hellbilly Deluxe 2 just debuted on the Billboard Top 200 Chart at #8 last week, is nominated in the “Best Live Band” Category. Zombie will also close out the award show with what will undoubtedly be a “must see” performance.

Slipknot and Stone Sour vocalist Corey Taylor is nominated in the “Best Vocalist” category. Stone Sour are currently hard at work in Nashville on their third album for Roadrunner, which is being produced by Nick Raskulinecz, while Slipknot have recently debuted their acclaimed short film for the heart-wrenching song “Snuff.”

Megadeth have garnered TWO nominations: The critically acclaimed latest album ENDGAME is nominated in the “Album of the Year”Dave Mustaine, who was the recipient of the inaugural Golden God Award at last year’s ceremony, is also nominated in the “Best Guitarist” category. Mustaine is also confirmed to present the “Most Metal Athlete” Award at the event. category, while frontman

**Winners will be determined by public online voting – so be sure to cast yours now!! Voting is open until March 30, with winners being announced live at the 2010 Golden Gods Awards Show at Club Nokia in Los Angeles on April 8. The show will be broadcast on VH1 Classic on May 22.

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Soul Sanctuary is a six piece alternative metal band from England and we’ve been keeping our eyes on them since the initial  interview that they had with HeadbangToday.com! Afterlife is Soul Sanctuary’s debut album and was produced, engineered, written, sung (screamed), mixed and mastered by one of their lead vocalists Luke Gibson. Heavily talented  to bring us quality heavy metal!

Their demo tracks grew onto me like  a parasite, tapping into the host’s brain, convincing me that this will be an album worthy of purchase. So there I had it. I bought “Afterlife” and waited in great inticipation for its arrival. Upon receiving it, I popped it in and the only thing that kept coming to mind while listening to the entire album twice in a row was “REVIEW” – This album deserves and demands a review that will contain my thoughts and feelings that streams throughout my mind as the tracks play along.

The album explodes with the very first track after which the album is named (or vice versa) “Afterlife“. The intro of “Afterlife” itself already gave me a sense of what I can expect from the rest of the tracks with it’s brain-vibrating screaming, fast paced drumming and ground-breaking riffs. The song well put together with very nice polish that will ensure you the overall quality of the album. It has a beautiful guitar solo backed up with heavy riffing and contains two very apocolyptic-sounding breakdowns near the end which eventually leads to a nice steady decline of solid screaming which halts after the song’s trademark drumbeat.

Game Of Conviction is the second track on their album which reminds me very much of Sevendust with it’s coarse backing vocals and short-bursts of combined musical excellence. It contains yet another beautiful solo which is carried by fast metal drumbeats and kick-ass riffing. The melodic vocals and screaming compliments eachother well in this song which is something not many bands in my experience can get the hang of with two vocalists.

Afterlife’s third track is called Destiny. A new song that I haven’t heard from Soul Sanctuary before while I was enjoying all their demo tracks prior to the album’s release.  It’s chorusses finnish themselves off with decent fast and well composed riffs. Another outstanding solo has managed to embed itself into this song. Their guitarists Ed Stevens and Anthony Montague have really done amazing work with their talents and have put it to a good use. The melodic bass notes serves as a perfect backbone to the song.

Killing Time, the album’s fourth track kicks off with heavy growling and excells towards slow heavy riffs with the drummer crashing his symbols timeously with the heavy riffing. A song that also proves that whispers and screams can be equally powerful. A brilliant guitar solo electrifies you towards heavy growling followed by a very fast and funky, funk,  drum & bass-like bass slapping solo. This song is the shit.

Track no. 5 is Packaged To Sell. It’s been  a personal all-time favourite since I heard the demo version. Some have said that the screaming vocals sound a lot like that of Slipknot’s Corey Taylor… I’ll have to disagree slightly, but I have to give it to Soul Sanctuary. Their screams/growls are indeed pretty awesome! Luke Gibson does an excellent job in his vocal work. I like the way the two vocalists have come up with using melodic singing combined with screaming and packaged it into a pretty heavy album – to sell.

The sixth track called Reflections starts off with a chilled accoustic riff and decent melodic singing from both vocalists. The song then eventually progresses into nice heavy alternative rock and rocks on until it declines back into its accoustic state. A perfect blend. I can see this type of song being played on national radio here in South Africa. It’s probably one of Soul Sanctuary’s ‘safest’ songs to be commercialised and released for local radio airtime.

Number 7 – Scars Of You, was added to the album for probably no other reason but to show off each band members’ talent in their own respective department! Eardrum-tampering screams, decent melodic singing, another amazing solo, cool bass tunes with solid riffs and tight drumming is rarely heard of in one song!

Their lyrics cover personal experiences from the singer’s perspective which a lot of fans can generally relate to. I remember once seeing someone post something to Soul Sanctuary, telling them that Road Runner Records will never sign them because of their “Emo Singing”.  He even went on to compare Megadeth’s lyrics with Soul Sanctuary’s… Well, I disagree. It’s a well-known fact that Dave Mustane from Megadeth’s lyrics are usually just plain silly. Soul Sanctuary has managed to produce their own album and although a label such as Road Runner Records would be benificial to the band’s future, R.R. simply aren’t aware of Soul Sanctuary’s material just yet. Who knows? Maybe these record label giants will notice them after a second album?

I don’t even need to review the rest of Afterlife’s tracks! So I will keep them under wraps until you unwrap your own self-bought christmas prezzie and pop “Afterlife” into your system.  It’s an outstanding album, perfectly composed by an exceptionally talented band that deserves to be a part of any metal head’s music collection.

IN SHORT:

Afterlife is a music masterpiece considering the fact that it is Soul Sanctuary’s debut album of which the quality of the produced tracks are superb.  It’s jam-packed with beautifully unique guitar solos, heavy riffs, funky bass riffs and heavy screaming combined with excellent melodic singing.  I would kill to see these guys live and I anticipate future releases from them. I can’t even begin to imagine what Soul Sanctuary will evolve into.

10\10 metal horns \m/

Enough said.

Now go get the album – www.soulsanctuarymusic.com

R.I.P … But come back from the dead…

In every die-hard fan’s lifetime there had always been a couple of bands that have played trumendous influencial roles in our lives. Bands that have been in posession of strong and probably one of the most powerful fanbases of all time during their reigning on-stage performances and heavy metal or hard rock careers.

As usual, all good things always come to a bitter end and it’s always sad to see one’s favourite band break up. We’ve seen the members and award-winning ingredients of these bands either disappear into complete nothingness, or they get diluted into watered-down versions of their former selves, dissolving their talent onto less powerful new projects that often seem to have that something special missing at all times!

We’ve decided to bring you three of the most memorable bands that have broken up in the past decade whom some of us would absolutely die to see them rock the stages again!

Coal Chamber:

These American nu-metalists have always had a spot within any metal-head’s heart. They’ve seen huge success within their near decade-long dominance in the nu-metal category. With the spawn of their very first self-titled debut album which produced the single “Loco” and the eerie music video which followed, they almost suddenly gained huge popularity throughout the world’s metal underground scene.

Coal Chamber was unique in many ways. From having a female bassist with heavy doom-like bass riffs to combining an image which had the dark-goth-rocking-gloom, leathery studded outfits and make-up mixed with the lead singer, Dez Fafara’s tattooed face. Coal Chamber revived heaviness on all planes known to the world’s metal industry today and scared the crap out of any considerably average ‘normal’ human being.

With 3 albums under the belt, Coal Chamber called it a day due to quarrels between the band and their drummer. Dez Fafara continued working on Devil Driver which is still a big success today.

The reason we would want Coal Chamber back on the stage? Well, we’ve also seen many old bands that have released top-notch material recently. We can only imagine the heaviness that Coal Chamber would’ve evolved into were it still alive today.They didn’t do too bad with their final album, but they woul’ve almost definately gone back to their raw heaviness that put them on the map in the first place, if they were still going today. Don’t all bands revisit their garage days at some point?

Rage Against The Machine:

They were rap-metal, heavy metal, alternative, punk and funk! Who could ever forget about Rage Against The Machine? Their debut album reached tripple platinum success while they continued to go full force and performed live in the streets where they politically protested against the governments, and were involved in other activism.

With several record labels displaying interest in signing them in their earlier years, the band only really experienced true, self maintaining success after the initial release of their debut-self-titled album. One of their most popular songs, “Killing In The Name Of”, gained an unpredictable amount of airtime on international radio stations, considering the nature of RATM. The “Fuck You” version of the song, contains 17 iterations of the word fuck and it was once even played onBBC’s Radio 1 Top Single’s show! (Last sentence source: Wikipedia)

Why do we want Rage revived? Well it’s pretty self explanitory. We would dig to see what these dudes, fused as one band, would be capable of in today’s heated political issues. Our planet is on the verge of exploding into a nasty war somewhere and Rage would’ve either sparked it, or prevented it with their strong lyrical content packaged into extremely controversial album artwork!

WE WANT MORE!

Sound Garden:

Remember these grammy award winners? So do we, and they are another band that we want back on the charts! Soundgarden was undoubtedly the fire starters of alternative and one of the best grunge rockers in the history of rock as a whole. They first rocked the charts in 1994 with their fourth album, Superunknown which carried the Grammy Award-winning single, “Black Hole Sun.” The music video of the latter, have remained fresh within our memories, like a bad lucid childhood-nightmare of burning toys and evil morphing faces.

Soundgarden sold over twenty million records world-wide and further released a final album in 1996 after which the band broke up a year later. Sound Garden’s lead singer, Chris Cornell clashed with his fellow members after trying to mellow-out Sound Garden’s trademark heavy riffs. After the break up, Chris formed a supergroup band with Rage Against The machine’s former band members called Audioslave.

Now Audioslave is an ‘okay’ band and although they consist out of Sound Garden’s lead singer and Rage’s band members, they will never be another Sound Garden nor RATM! Where’s Audioslave now, huh?

The reason we would like to see Sound Garden back together again is because our technology is simply not advanced enough to revive Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain back from the dead! Otherwise Nirvana would’ve been in this top three list for sure!

Don’t get me wrong, Soundgarden was an awesome band and they provided us with heavy quality, grunge and alternative rock during the prime times of most rock heads’ lives while still standing out among many bands during the extremely competitive music industry during the 90’s.

All the above mentioned bands are from the 90’s, so those of you that grew up and were most influenced by bands in the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s might disagree with our selection.

But.

Excuse us. We headbang too much.