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Sentinal: Today Is A Good Day To Die
Sentinal - Today Is A Good Day To Die

2005-07-26

When you get a four song demo, produced on what the band describes as a "peanut budget", you cannot, in all fairness, judge it the way you would a new Rhapsody album, you have to take things at face value, and this is what I'll try to do now.

Another thing is, bad power metal bands are the ultimate lousy sounding metal bands, I have had my brain pierced in the past by Italian bands, whose vocalist thinks he needs to reach as high as he can with his shrill sounding voice, thus threatening my already fragile ear drums.

Surprisingly, Sentinal overcome all of the odds stacked against them, and deliver a great 4 song demo.

The opening riff of You Cant Crucify Me starts you thinking of German power metal, but then the song takes a different path, more old-school, with a definite Iron Maiden feel in there, the moment the band's vocalist, Coll Matraves starts to sing, I released a deep sigh of relief, no shrieking banshee there, but rather a strong, raw sounding, almost Dickinson like quality, he carries the vocal duties with flying colors, and remains the center of the good, solid songs they have here.

The title song is another good track, some really good guitar work, with both guitarists playing impressive leads, all well-cushioned by a solid rhythm section, the bass doing some Thin Lizzy/Steve Harris bits.

The keyboards seem a bit out of place at first, but they sat better with me after a few consecutive listening sessions, they bring a further melodic element to the music.

Best track here is, to my opinion, the last one, Men OF War, a simple melodic verse starts of the song just the right way, and the band does what its good at, old-school melodic power/heavy metal, without trying to sound over-melodramatic or pompous,

Imaging this with sound by a name producer, such as Sacha Paeth or Dennis Ward, these songs can be the basis of a really good power metal album, let's just hope these guys get signed soon.

Alon Miasnikov



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