Harc a benzinért

Vadász (Hunter in Hungarian) might be one of the very first promising, respectable Hungarian attempts at heavy metal ever since the legendary Pokolgép. If you are familiar with my beloved home country's musical scene, you are familiar with how atrocious of a condition we are in musically, especially metal-wise. Well, that's hopefully about to change as you listen to the debut record of the newly assembled heavy metal legion, Vadász. While this record didn't immediately take us into the realm of the world elite, right up there with Riot City, Blazon Stone, or similar, this is a pretty solid starting point. The album presents potential in several different domains and shows that the band is worthy of your attention, and this record is worth a listen.

The band plays very straightforward, easily accessible 80s-worshipping heavy metal. This is one of those dime-a-dozen records that you would find on the "NWOTHM Full Albums" YouTube channel, and you'd have a very hard time remembering it, particularly among the 800 other records that sound very similar to this. In the band's defense, they play this simple style pretty competently, and even with several lacking elements, this is still a pretty decent album. The band shows faint, distant signs of great potency and creativity, but the album does sound a little bit too immature to enter the realm of elite, world-class heavy metal records.

"Harc a benzinért" is right away the most outstanding song on here. It is catchy, it is mean and speedy, it's got everything a great starter would need. The band did a great job at balancing everything out, because despite the lack of technical abilities (more on that later), there is a decent variety here. "Mocskos Rock'n'Roll" for example is a really riff-oriented, mid-paced heavy metal crusher with probably the catchiest chorus on the album. But the band also doesn't shy away from exploring more slow-paced, power metal-like pieces such as "Igfon krónikái" and "Örök fiatalság". Well done on that front, but here we go with the downsides.

In the aforementioned, I mentioned a lack of technical abilities... That's what the major issue is with this record. The opener song for example would have been an absolute menace if it only gets a proper guitar solo. Instead, when you reach roughly 1:41, the band enters this really annoying and lame tapping sequence, followed by exhausted and enervated melodies with absolutely no speedy, melodic sweep-picking, scale-shredding massacre you were hoping for. If only that was an intro to the real solo, but the next thing you know is that we're back to the main riff and the chorus plays again. Oh, that was meant to be the solo... Cool story.

This follows the record all the way through. Not one of these solos live up to what you were to expect from a heavy metal album. I get it that this isn't neoclassical, but come on now. Thanks to the catchiness of the album, this is disguised to the maximum extent. But even like this, there is nothing that makes up for technical competence, nothing. The vocalist is also pretty damn passionless. Just check out the chorus of "Szabadság és lóerő", in which on the last line of the chorus, he is somewhere between backing out of that scream or yell and completely going for it. On the upside, the percussion and the bass are both pretty damn beefy, and they save the record's ass from being completely mediocre.

With all the amateurism and immaturity, this record is still worth checking out. In fact, heavy metal fans will probably enjoy it. It will not sweep off the desk of your favorite heavy metal albums, and make you reorganize your favorite NWOTHM albums, that's for absolute certain. But still, this is better than average. If you enjoy upbeat, energetic heavy metal, I recommend that you check this debuting disc out.