Into the Netherworld's Realm

Greece truly seems to me to be a magical wonderland of dreams in regards to traditional heavy metal; watch a video of virtually any traditional metal band playing there, well-known or not, and you'll be likely to see a full crowd of Greeks singing all the lyrics to whichever song happens to be played. It's sort of like Japan, I guess, except for a more specific subset of music. The Greeks especially, especially seem to like heavy doses of their Manilla Road, treating the band as kings when they play there. This being the case, it's no surprise Greece would have a goodly number of bands attempting to emulate the mighty 'road; Ageless Wisdom did so in fucking 1990, one of the first bands of its ilk. Unfortunately, most of these emulators are, quite frankly, complete shit, so it's very refreshing to see a band like Wrathblade do a more competent job at it (in fact, the only band that is competent Greek MR worship "like Wrathblade" that I know of is the aforementioned Ageless Wisdom).

The two biggest problems that tend to plague other Greek and Italian bands, are, fundamentally, poor songwriting and poor vocals. Most seem to borrow rather liberally either from Ironsword's technique of "our vocalist can't carry a tune in a bucket so let's just do harsh amelodic vocals all the time and pretend we just think it's cool" or Battleroar's of "we can't write riffs for shit so let's just write 3 riffs and make it a full-length." Into the Netherworld's Realm has neither of these problems; vocalist Nick Varsamis is talented, charismatic, and energetic, with a strong, vibrato baritone highly reminiscent of Mike Scalzi (Slough Feg). He does also do harsh screams occasionally, but they're skillfully and tastefully placed so that it actually contributes to the listening experience, rather than detracting from it. The riffs, too, are nothing to sneeze at; it's not as though they fire off riff after riff in a maniacal progressive barrage, but they vary often enough for the style and, more importantly, they are invariably excellent.

Clearly, the band has a strong aptitude for songwriting, alternating riffs seamlessly and knowing when it's okay to dial them back a notch in favor of the vocals, but not for too long, with a mastery that would make Mark Shelton proud. Even the musicianship is excellent; drummer John Alexandrakis may not be Randy Foxe, but his intuition for pacing and style is strong, knowing when to go to a slow militaristic roll, a steady workmanlike rhythm, or a straight ahead assault easily. Some of the riffs aren't easy to play, either; I'm not going to say other acts like Battleroar or Wotan wouldn't be capable of technically handling them, except actually that's exactly what I'm saying, or at least it wouldn't surprise me, since so many of these modern acts seem to think taking a simple, barbaric, proto-Omen esque riff (*cough* Ironsword *cough*), paring it with gruff yells, and calling it a song is how to play like Manilla Road.

The production here is excellent, too; while I wouldn't say the production of any similar acts is awful, it can feel neutered or just downright strange. For example, Wotan's Thunderstorm demo from 1993 has quite raw, even poor production in place, but it still sounds much better and more organic than that of their debut full-length much later. The guitars here are heavy as fuck, the drums are consistently metallic, and the vocals have no obvious issues; what more could one ask for, really? The biggest complaint I have here is that it feels perhaps a bit "safe" at times, but really that's only when compared to bizarre masterminds of the genre like Manilla Road, Longings Past, or Tales of Medusa. It's still great, consistent stuff; no, it's not terribly out of the box, but everything is executed so solidly I can't really complain. This is a young Greek band already beginning to climb its way into first tier epic metal, and I can't wait to hear what they do next, hopefully they'll only continue to rise.