Crime Records

Thursday, November 7, 2013

Hammerforce - Dostup Zakryt Review



Band: Hammerforce
Album: Dostup Zakryt
Label: N/A
Country: Russia
Release Date: October 2013

This review is on Hammerforce hailing from Saint-Petersburg, Russia. A country I know I want to visit eventually, for various things including some killer vodka. Before I go off track on other topics. To familiarize myself with the band and their history I went and checked out their site, which is pretty impressive covering their history, discography, etc you can view that here at this link hammerforce.ru it’s in English and Russian. If you can’t read either, I suggest using Google’s Translate. Now since that’s out of the way, onto the review.

As mentioned they’re from Russia which brings two other bands to mind that I listen to. One from the early 90’s Gorky Park and another more recent Biopsyhoz. Both extremely talented bands, and I’ll include Hammerforce in that grouping as well. It might just me but when bands sing in their native language, I find it very refreshing. Sure, even if you don’t know what they’re saying as you may not know the language. The music itself will still get you moving, one thing that drew me to Dimmu Borgir in the early days singing in their native Norwegian as opposed to English as the words sometimes lose their meaning in translation. Or it may not fit into the music properly if it’s in any other language but the native one.

The album consists of the following 9 tracks, which range from almost 4 to 6 minutes.

1. Твоя война (Tvoya Voyna) 04:51
2. Стереотипы (Stereotipy) 03:43
3. Никто (Nikto) 05:16
4. Масс-медиа (Mass-Media) 05:17
5. Беглец (Beglets) 03:55
6. Вторая земля (Vtoraya Zemlya) 05:41
7. Смена поколений (Smena Pokoleniy) 04:16
8. Размышления (Razmyshleniya) 03:52
9. Доступ закрыт (Dostup Zakryt) 04:19

To further familiarize myself with the band, I checked out their earlier releases 2009’s “Dice” and March 2013’s English version of “Access Denied”. As this review is on “Dostup Zakryt” the Russian language version of “Access Denied” which I heard was received quite well per the band’s site.
Now I did notice the English version of “Access Denied” had a bit of a heavier mix, compared to the newer “Dostup Zakryt”. Maybe it was due to the change in languages as well as singers. But it takes away nothing from the newer release. Somewhat reminds me of Dream Theater at times which is a good thing.

Anyways, as Nikita (their singer, manager, producer, and keyboardist) states that they’re Power Progressive Metal. I have to agree with that, it is highly keyboard and synth influenced, by no means taking away from the music as it fits in cleanly. At times they remind me of Dragon Force sound-wise without the over the top guitar solos. The production is very clear, sometimes the guitars get drowned out,  not by a huge margin though. The vocals, are of the clean variety, so if you’re looking for deathly growls, it’s not here. I happen to enjoy any kind of vocals in metal, clean vocals included.

You can find it at these locations.

Bandcamp: http://hammerforce.bandcamp.com/album/dostup-zakryt
iTunes: http://itunes.apple.com/album/id690644507
CDBaby: http://cdbaby.com/cd/hammerforce6


Overall I give this disc a 7 out of 10.


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