Admissions

This band’s story dates back from quite some time ago, the mid-80’s to be precise, when they began their career under the name Cemetery. They were practising the good old thrash initially, but by the early-90’s they had already embraced the death metal idea, releasing two demos of fairly adequate progressive death metal not far from mid-period Death. Then suddenly, around 1994, they decided to change their name to Aeons End, and add a female vocalist, the bass player Robin Fischer’s sister Gaby. This must have been the wisest decision they have ever taken cause under this moniker they came up with one of the milestones in the technical/progressive thrash circle, the mini-album “Spiral Seas”, a stunning masterpiece of intricate guitar mosaics. A demo was released two years later before the guys (and a girl) called it quits.

The Red to Grey odyssey started another two years later as the entire line-up from the previous two formations, minus the guitarist Daniel Zizek, were ready to start a new chapter, from metal history as well, and enter the new millennium as one of the flag carriers of the old school resurrection wave. The “Circle of Pain” demo was an excellent beginning exhibiting competent retro power/speed/thrash with progressive overtones, engaging but also fairly hard-hitting music. The diverse approach was presented without any alterations on the full-length debut two years later, the guys quickly establishing themselves as reliant, skilful, inspired classic thrash defenders.

The release of the album reviewed here was scheduled as an almost immediate follow-up to the debut, but numerous delays and I don’t know what other complications enlarged the gap between the two opuses, the band losing whatever inertia they had accumulated. Eight years would be a big gap to fill in even by much bigger players on the scene, but one should pay kudos to the guys for trying cause this effort here isn’t bad at all. In fact, it starts exactly from where its predecessor has left off, the title-track presenting the aggressive thrashy and the more elaborate progressive developments ably mixed together. A serious, ambitious beginning which has an even more graceful continuation in the form of “Cast the First Stone”, a first-class technical thrasher keeping the pace up the entire time, an immaculate shredfest worthy of Coroner and Heathen even. “Free” calms down and brings forward power metal, and “The Amour Piercing Dread” isn’t far behind in terms of execution only adding more epic touches and a couple of more melodic embellishments. “In the Darkest Corner” brings back the thrash with all the headbanging vigour it can muster, and “Sweet Suffering” further consolidates the hard-hitting speed/thrashing rifforama with even more intense and more technical escalations, plus a nice memorable chorus. “The Fall of God” mixes the two sides being a cool power/thrash proposition with bouncy dynamic rhythms, and “Celebration of the Cult” notches up the speed with nods towards the early German speed metal movement (Angel Dust, Helloween, Warrant). “The Cheated One” slows down as a finishing touch introducing heavy steam-rolling riffs to the fore, the crushing rhythm-section creating a lot of seismic dramatism.

A very good showing again, but again the guys’ visitations on the scene are quite sporadic a possible reason for which could be their engagements with other outfits on the circuit like the retro thrashers Hateful Agony, the progressive metal formation Valley’s Eve, etc. The iron has to be forged until it’s hot and red, but unfortunately that’s not an option for our friends here. Well, they should be able to bring it to the desired shape even with a shade of grey… whenever they feel like hammering again.