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Imagika > My Bloodied Wings > Reviews
Imagika - My Bloodied Wings

Riffs on bloodied wings. - 81%

Empyreal, December 21st, 2015

Here we have another Imagika album, and the other one I think is really cool. This was their second album with gruff madman Norman Skinner on vocals, and they delivered another album full of charging riffs, break-neck tempos and huge, hungry vocals. These guys were quite good at winging out cool, heavy as fuck riffs and then playing them really fast. It isn't really a complex formula; they just put out chugging, melodic thrash riffing and kept the energy up for a full song. The riffs are all pretty cool, though I have to say they're not as good as the ones on Devils on Both Sides - but that's just semantics and they rule pretty hard anyway. They don't really borrow from any one band too much, though there's a fair bit of Rage-style German speed/power metal going on, and some parts sound like a more simplistic, bludgeoning Symphony X, especially combined with Skinner's melodic vocals.

The first few songs are the best ones – the raging, shrieking “Hunter's Moon,” the monster groove of “Second Coming” and the boiling riff-cauldron of “Heart of Icarus” are all satisfying B-grade power metal. Norman Skinner's voice draws from Matt Barlow and Russell Allen quite liberally, but to good effect – he sounds excellent. The production is clear and heavy as an anvil. The album loses its way a bit in the second half and becomes kind of disjointed, with some of the mellower interludes not really jelling with the aggressive thrashing. You can hear the band was trying some new things, but it didn't quite work here. But then “Forever Darkened” is a satisfying kick in the teeth and the title track is a really cool, moodier epic that flexes the band's more creative muscles.

If there's a problem, it's just that nothing here is really essential – the band falls short of delivering an album that captivates the attention all the way through, and there are no songs here that catapult them to the major leagues. Like on Devils, there's an unfortunate lack of a great hook. But there is a charm and appeal to bands like Imagika, who are unflinchingly underground and cool, and who are obviously just regular working-class dudes who really liked metal and used their spare time from their real lives to put out albums like this for a small, dedicated cult of fans. I can dig that. There's an appeal to the humility of this kind of music. If that sounds good to you, too, then check out My Bloodied Wings.