Posts Tagged ‘sentinel steel’
Agressor – Say Your Prayers (1996)
Here’s a good one from the vaults that most metalheads probably haven’t heard…but should. Agressor was a NY band 
that apparently had been around since the 1980s but really only got decent recognition when their debut full length album, Say Your Prayers, was released in 1996. Kelz turned me on to these guys on a compilation tape that he had made for me. After hearing it I immediately called Sentinel Steel Records and ordered it from Denis.
The best description is to call these guys a poor man’s Overkill because the singer could fill in for Blitz and I doubt anyone would notice the difference. Say Your Prayers certainly has a feel of Overkill’s Feel the Fire and Taking Over, but of course not quite as good…and a decade late. That being said I have always loved this CD.
These guys apparently changed their name to Magus Beast in 2002 and I don’t think they ever released anything else.
If you dig Overkill’s early sound, then certainly download this and you won’t be disappointed.
Overlife – Between Passion and Madness – 1998
1998. I was really buying a lot of music at the time betweenwhat I was selling through my online music store and what 
I was buying for myself. A lot of the stuff I was buying for myself was from Denis Gulbey at Sentinel Steel Records. Back in the old days when you could call in and jibber jabber, Denis recommended Overlife to me. So…thanks Denis!
Overlife hails from Alicante, Spain. I built their first website (long since gone) and used to correspond with Fabricio quite a bit. What really drew me to them was Leandro’s voice. Very unique and a lot of emotion. The music itself was a little sloppy in places and even the vocals seem a bit out of key sometimes, but this album is really good overall. It’s sung completely in English but I included 2 bonus tracks in Spanish. They are good European power/prog metal with a hint of wanting to sound like Dream Theater. Their later albums sounded more like DT type prog which was a turnoff for me. So, this album it is. I still listen to it a few times a year. It’s a bright memory of a darker time in my life where the death of my father and my divorce seemed to dominate my every day life.
So if you’re into the aforementioned style of power metal, I recommend this highly.
Custard? WTF? There is a band named Custard?
Yep. Kelz made for me a compilation tape around 1997 that had some cool stuffs on it like Custard, Tension, 
Skullview(!) and some other stuff that escapes me right now. I listened to that tape all the friggin’ time until I got a car in 2000 that didn’t have a cassette player. So I saw that Sentinel Steel Records had Kingdoms of Your Life on CD and picked it up promptly. He always has cool stuff and I recommend you checking it out if you’re even mildly into Power Metal.
Custard hails from Germany and are apparently still together but I am pretty suer that this CD is out of print, that’s why I am posting it here. Fading Memories is the only song I can’t get into. This is good straight up power metal. The singer’s range isn’t that great but it’s very listenable. Failed Mission is easily my favorite. They have little bit of Maiden, Helloween, Accept etc in their sound.
I never bothered to check out their other albums, likely out of fear of disappointment.
On a scale of 1-5, this gets an easy 3.75.
Enjoy it!
The Metal Files 
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