Artist: Alltheniko
Label: My Graveyard Production
Release: 2007
Rating: 2/5
“We Will Fight!”, the debut from the trio Alltheniko, is an album that looks deep back into the eighties. It rummages through the music written by classic heavy metal bands like Accept or Judas Priest, then tops it off with the speed and thrash of something like early Anthrax, and I even catch whiffs of Metal Church. On top of that comes Manowar-style pomp in the melodies (Sufferman, Criminal Mind), and in the track Alltheniko “We Will Fight!” there’s even some Running Wild in the rapid-fire riff picking. The speeding in the closing Carcass brings to mind the grime of Germany’s Sacred Steel. At times they even sound like fellow Italians Domine, stripped of the orchestral arrangements. And, well, that pretty much wraps it up.
These guys can play, and they’re technically very well put together. The album has a live, raw sound, especially in the rhythm section, which is dirty and garage-y. Alltheniko know how to spice up the songs by stringing together different tempos, calm and fast passages, which lifts the dynamics, especially in the instrumental middle sections, while they don’t bother much with dressing up the intros or outros.
The vocals are seriously distracting. His English is once again indigestible, and this time even the tone of the voice and the way he sings are hard to swallow. The vocals come in only two flavors: rasping, in a mid-range register, or an attempt at a “Halford/Accept-style” wail, which is really just extreme screeching. It’s too weak and nondescript.
What sinks Alltheniko overall is an insatiable thirst to try out different approaches of their “role models,” all listed in the paragraph above. In doing so, they’ve completely lost their own identity. There are a whopping 12 tracks on the album. That’s too many, and you drown in all the listening, and by the time the record has spun through, you don’t get that feeling that drives you to hit “play” on the CD player again. The cherry on top is the cover of Motorhead (Ace Of Spades), which, thanks to the horribly mismatched vocals, is more a mockery of the great Motorhead name than any kind of tribute to the legends.
It’s crazy. Just how many heavy metal bands does Italy churn out, bands that are technically extremely skilled but offer nothing of their own, nothing you could recognize as theirs alone. “We Will Fight!” also stays at the level of a (mediocre) copy, and confirms the standard of the general reach of the Italian approach to writing heavy metal.
Lineup
Dave Nightfight – vocals, bass guitar
Joe Boneshaker – guitar
Luke The Idol – drums, percussion, backing vocals
Tracklist
1. Thrash All Around
2. Strong Commandos In Black Tanks
3. Wheel Of Fortune
4. Sufferman
5. Dead Brain (Extermination)
6. Sound Of Rust
7. Coming Soon
8. The Silent Priest
9. Alltheniko “We Will Fight!”
10. Criminal Mind
11. Carcass
12. Ace Of Spades (Bonus Track)
Running time: 49.54
