Review by Maverick on March 23, 2024.

Still Remains continues to remain a metalcore beast among the few bands who can actually play metalcore properly. The metalcore genre has continuously been flooded by repetitive emo-core wussies and bands similar to that, it is therefore highly misleading to any listener of music to compare Of Love And Lunacy to most metalcore releases. This is not the same whiney scene shit that most –core bands play, so if you’re a Design the Skyline fan or something like that – consider leaving this band alone.

Of Love And Lunacy offers us a frenzy of metallic intelligence grafted with considerably respectable doses of hardcore, encapsulated with interesting atmospheric sound-effects which converge into a metalcore masterpiece. This album offers us no uninteresting vocal utilization or any other uninteresting instrumental elements, it is brilliant and at times progressive. This album starts off with “To Live And Die By Fire,” which begins with drumming immediately followed by seriously breath-taking guitar riffs that sets off a bad-ass tone, complemented by the interesting psychedelic keyboarding. The lyrics of this song are fairly simplistic, but it offers us an overwhelmingly complex implication heard in the vocalist’s voice, “We've burned this city and it's coming down. Pack your bags, we leave at dawn.” The vocalist drives himself in the frenzy of the complex atmosphere created, with death growling and hardcore groans. This just made me excited, and well I thought to myself “Metalcore? Wow.” The other notable songs include "Bliss" and "Recovery," which are carefully written to form of a very progressive blend of Shadow's Fall and Nightrage, and on some places resemble the instrumentals of Haste the Day. The break-downs don't annoy the crud of you to the point of boredom, but is equally panned out and blends in with the rest of the album's musical content.

“I Can Revive Him with My Own Hands” is in my opinion the highlight of this album, it contains the entire album’s flavour. It opens up with a serious guitar riff, and eventually the vocalist growls some pretty sick lyrics: “if love was a door, I've slammed it in your face, ran out to the balcony, and jumped to the ground, I've sponged the place in gasoline, before igniting the foundation.” Considering the fact that I’ve listened to other metalcore bands such as Killswitch Engage, their lyrics are completely boring compared to this. In fact the maturity presented in this song’s lyrics makes any other metalcore band’s lyrics sound like kiddies rock. The guitars continue to capture your attention. The continuity of the album is filled with some sick and brilliant drumming, with the vocalist continuing to articulate some hardcore metal maturity “if love was a child, then I've scolded him to no end, he's been filled with nothing inside, until the day when bullets filled the emptiness inside him, from his own gun, from his own hands.” Those lyrics sent shivers down my spine, and it set the record straight – whatever was to continue was to capture some serious emotion and it did. “I can revive him with my own two hands” is growled alongside some sick back-up hardcore groans, ending off this song with a notable bang.

This whole album was filled with intense emotion, metallic causticity, and brilliant musicianship. All of the songs on the album flow from each other, each song is not isolated or anything like that. They closely resemble the original flavour of the album, however it plays out with uniqueness in each track, emphatic of the artistic luminosity presented throughout this album. The riffs are carefully grafted in a setting which is governed by time-perfected drumming, and momentous synthesizing of the keyboard. The cleans in this album is within itself very memorable, and definitely mesmerizing. This is recommended for any fan of interesting and brilliant music.

Rating: 9 out of 10

Review by Maverick on March 23, 2024.

Still Remains continues to remain a metalcore beast among the few bands who can actually play metalcore properly. The metalcore genre has continuously been flooded by repetitive emo-core wussies and bands similar to that, it is therefore highly misleading to any listener of music to compare Of Love And Lunacy to most metalcore releases. This is not the same whiney scene shit that most –core bands play, so if you’re a Design the Skyline fan or something like that – consider leaving this band alone.

Of Love And Lunacy offers us a frenzy of metallic intelligence grafted with considerably respectable doses of hardcore, encapsulated with interesting atmospheric sound-effects which converge into a metalcore masterpiece. This album offers us no uninteresting vocal utilization or any other uninteresting instrumental elements, it is brilliant and at times progressive. This album starts off with “To Live And Die By Fire,” which begins with drumming immediately followed by seriously breath-taking guitar riffs that sets off a bad-ass tone, complemented by the interesting psychedelic keyboarding. The lyrics of this song are fairly simplistic, but it offers us an overwhelmingly complex implication heard in the vocalist’s voice, “We've burned this city and it's coming down. Pack your bags, we leave at dawn.” The vocalist drives himself in the frenzy of the complex atmosphere created, with death growling and hardcore groans. This just made me excited, and well I thought to myself “Metalcore? Wow.” The other notable songs include "Bliss" and "Recovery," which are carefully written to form of a very progressive blend of Shadow's Fall and Nightrage, and on some places resemble the instrumentals of Haste the Day. The break-downs don't annoy the crud of you to the point of boredom, but is equally panned out and blends in with the rest of the album's musical content.

“I Can Revive Him with My Own Hands” is in my opinion the highlight of this album, it contains the entire album’s flavour. It opens up with a serious guitar riff, and eventually the vocalist growls some pretty sick lyrics: “if love was a door, I've slammed it in your face, ran out to the balcony, and jumped to the ground, I've sponged the place in gasoline, before igniting the foundation.” Considering the fact that I’ve listened to other metalcore bands such as Killswitch Engage, their lyrics are completely boring compared to this. In fact the maturity presented in this song’s lyrics makes any other metalcore band’s lyrics sound like kiddies rock. The guitars continue to capture your attention. The continuity of the album is filled with some sick and brilliant drumming, with the vocalist continuing to articulate some hardcore metal maturity “if love was a child, then I've scolded him to no end, he's been filled with nothing inside, until the day when bullets filled the emptiness inside him, from his own gun, from his own hands.” Those lyrics sent shivers down my spine, and it set the record straight – whatever was to continue was to capture some serious emotion and it did. “I can revive him with my own two hands” is growled alongside some sick back-up hardcore groans, ending off this song with a notable bang.

This whole album was filled with intense emotion, metallic causticity, and brilliant musicianship. All of the songs on the album flow from each other, each song is not isolated or anything like that. They closely resemble the original flavour of the album, however it plays out with uniqueness in each track, emphatic of the artistic luminosity presented throughout this album. The riffs are carefully grafted in a setting which is governed by time-perfected drumming, and momentous synthesizing of the keyboard. The cleans in this album is within itself very memorable, and definitely mesmerizing. This is recommended for any fan of interesting and brilliant music.

Rating: 9 out of 10

Review by Adam on March 21, 2001.

Sure its difficult to follow up an album like Arise, but if that is what you are looking to try to do then I am not sure what the band was trying to say with this release. Sure it has its heavy moments especially with songs like Biotech Is Godzill, but anyone with the copy saying Epic Records might have an idea of what I am talking about. This is the same band we know and love; however, much has changed within the unit. They have added more diversity within their song structures and have started to experiment with a bit more down tuning. It also seems that the band is straying in a hardcore/metal type direction as well. Nonetheless this another Sepultura cd of pure metal quality. It may not be as intense or brutal as Arise but it is still pretty good. If you are a Sepultura fan you owe it to yourself to get this cd!

Bottom Line: If you are a Sepultura fan you probably already have this. Give it a listen if you are up for some experimental thrash/metalcore from Brazil's finest.

Rating: 8 out of 10.

Review by Vladimir on January 18, 2024.

It's time to check out some greek black metal with themes of ancient horrors and deities, and in this review, I'll be covering the band Shavalyoth from Rhodes, with their second EP Μαρχωσιάς, released on October 4th, 2023 via the label Hellenic Metal World.

The EP opens with an ambient track 'Ύμνος Στον Λύκο Της Αβύσσου' which contains drum and guitar build ups and Greek spoken word. After that, it is traditional black metal with tremolo picking riffs, fast drums with double-bass, and harsh vocals that have a bit of dry growling on the third track 'Βάαλ (Ο Βασιλεύς Της Κολάσεως)', but this track in particular also uses some mid-tempo rhythm with melodic riffing and cosmic keyboards. The final track 'Σαμαηλ (Ο Πρίγκηψ Του Ερέβους)' has a nice keyboard intro before being followed with double-bass drumming and tremolo riffing, but switching to mid-tempo rhythm towards the end.

The songwriting is rather simple and they seem to use elements of cosmic black metal bands such as Odium or The Covenant, even with all the themes of ancient gods, horror and evil, however their song ideas do seem to vary a lot from one part to another. For the most part, the songs seem to have some moderately dynamic flow that nicely switches from one section to another, having a consistent and focused arrangement all throughout. The only real downside that I have with this album are two things, that being the vocals. The performance itself feels a bit too forced, despite the fact that they are traditional black metal vocals which express the harsh voice, however personally it doesn't really seem that great. The sound production is raw but still slightly polished, with there being instances of different distorted guitar tones that switch from one to another.

Personally, this isn't really a terrible album or anything, in fact it is rather okay, but in the end it doesn't really leave that big of an impression if you ask me. I think that the band has some good ideas here and there, and they do seem to deal with interesting concepts, however I also believe that the band can certainly do so much better in order to make their work stand out even more.

Rating: 6 out of 10