Axehammer - Marching On 2012

According to many accounts, and their official words, Axehammer established 30 years ago. That's in 1983 they released their first demo. It was the time where Maidens, Helloween and many others heavy and power metal giants were just pop out from their eggs. So, are Axehammer a legendary band that doing a "comeback"? Hard to defined, because their complete full album was only released in 2005. Today's Marching On is their officially second album. See the time gap? The effect for this is, Marching On sounds very likely a 30 years old metal album. Not just the style, but the mixing and mastering sounds actually "preserved" , or in better term, vintage.

Tune in the first song, Walk In The Fire, it is very raw as in '80s power metal. In some moments, also very NWOBHM galloping bass and sharp guitar riff. Singer Kleber Freitas is also able to mimic those '80 screamings. The Dragon Fly sounds something Iron Maiden open string riff. Not to get wrong, Axehammer is California based. Every song come with galloping bass as done by ,the later, Steve Harris. Then we also have Swing The Steel with a guitar tones that best doing this kind of Seek and Destroy riff. For a Judas Priest kinda singing is Midnight Train. Fire Away, a nice intro riff with full galloping drum, bringing a very classy power metal sample in this decade. The rest of album, Demon Killer, Cemetary and Flesh Machine also very hard to find the weakness. Making the assumption that these songs are well aging during their thirty years of journey.

Overall sound is Marching On a total raw and demo-like sound. Whether if this is consciously done, the audio did something high-end frequency tendency. The guitarist and bassist done enough vintage riff to make us thinking these are '80s party. A nicely done by the hard working band, solid works for '80 power metal tribute.

Metalharem class: ******** eight stars out of ten

Axehammer - Marching On 2012
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1. Walk Into the Fire 04:06
2. The Dragons Fly 05:19
3. Swing the Steel 04:31
4. Midnight Train 04:00
5. Fire Away 05:20
6. Demon Killer 04:21
7. Cemetary 07:24
8. Flesh Machine 04:13

Kleber Freitas - Vocals

Jerry Watt - Guitar

Horacio Colmenares - Bass

Joe Aghassi - Drums