Reternity ‘Facing The Demon’
Album Review By Adam McCann
MDD Records/Heavy Metal
After his departure from Spitefuel last year, vocalist Stefan Zörner quickly hit the ground running with his new project Reternity. With a decent demo under their belt, the band are ready to unleash their debut album ‘Facing The Demon’.
With the release of this album, Zörner is not following completely in the footsteps of Spitefuel. Instead, the Reternity ring leader has chosen to take elements from his various past bands and because of this, what ‘Facing The Demon’ offers listeners is on the surface, a modern heavy metal album that has plenty of hard rock tendencies. However, scratch just below this overarching sound and there are elements of Savatage and Yngwie Malmsteen with guitarist Carsten Sauter delivering an exceptional neo-classical guitar solo during the title track, alongside some beautiful acoustic workouts throughout. Furthermore, ‘Facing The Demon’ offers some very tasty down-tuned riffs that would even appeal to fans of thrash metal, particularly during ‘Down. Not. Broken’ and ‘Suicide Butterflies’, which are songs that have all the enjoyability of Metallica’s contemporary output.
Unfortunately, the production for ‘Facing The Demon’ is not the best, but this does not take anything away from this album and it is hard not to think how powerful ‘Facing The Demon’ would sound if it had the colossal power of Nuclear Blast or AFM Records behind it. However, occasionally the lyrics do need some work and sometimes struggle sit perfectly within the song. But, it is this flawed persona which makes ‘Facing The Demon’ sound so much fun and entertaining. Yes, Reternity have delivered an album which is raw and rough around the edges, but that gives ‘Facing The Demon’ a quality and integrity which is priceless.
Rating : 70/100
MHF Magazine/Adam McCann
