June 2020 Feature Release - The Pit Edition

It's now June which of course means that we'll be nominating a brand new monthly feature release for each clan. This essentially means that we're asking you to rate, review & discuss our chosen features for no other reason than because we enjoy the process & banter.     

This month's feature release for The Pit is 1989's classic fourth album from Houston-based speed metal outfit Helstar entitled "Nosferatu". It saw Helstar veering off their trademark heavy/power metal path towards a more frantic & velocity-fueled speed metal sound & we think it might appeal to some you thrashers out there.

https://metal.academy/releases/2924

I am listening to that based on that cover alone.

Sadly, the music doesn’t exactly live up to the quality of the cover.  It isn’t terrible but I find it very clunky in song structure and vocally think that it is way below par.  There’s obvious talent on the instrumentation front, however the band are not as deft when it comes to arrangement and songwriting.  Sections appear to fall over each other instead of integrate or glance as passable time changes.  Unlikely to revisit.

2.5/5

Unfortunately, I have to agree with Macabre on this one. While this album isn't all that bad, it certainly lacks any unique qualities that make it stand out from the countless other speed metal bands during the eighties trying to replicate Venom's sound.

The production on this album is lacking any prominent low end to give these songs any definitive punch, the bass lines are practically non-existent, the vocals are serviceable, but lack dynamic flare, and the songwriting is pretty weak. The band tried to incorporate odd time signatures and changing rhythms, but it's so clunky and the transitions feel forced.

4/10

2/5

I'm no massive fan of speed metal anyway, but I just found this boring. Poor production, as Saxy says the bottom end is non-existent, the vocals leave an awful lot to be desired and the songs feel flat, often merely a device to hang yet another masturbatory solo on. With so much music in the world, I can't imagine ever bothering with this again.

I do like speedy Neoclassical and shredding albums quite a bit, but this one didn't live up to the hype. I think Macabre put it best when they said it was clunky, there's a flow that's missing and it makes everything not terribly exciting. I didn't dislike it, there were some great instrumental parts and certain choruses and vocals were nice, but it didn't leave any lasting impressions on me at all. It just made me want to go and listen to more energetic power metal with the same sort of shreddy-Neoclassical leanings. I wanted to write its apparent popularity off as it being an older classic, but this was released in 1989, well into the life cycle of Speed/Power Metal, and I can't say I like it near as much as all the other big names of the 80's.

3/5

Wow! Despite it's serious praise on other websites, this release has been pretty much a universal failure here. This is why Metal Academy is so good a reference point for your more discerning metalheads in my opinion. We have a bunch of very well informed metal obsessives who call 'em purely as they see 'em & it will eventually see our charts being far more relevant than our oppositions in my opinion.

I agree with that sentiment wholeheartedly Daniel. The clan-filtered charts should end up being  particularly relevant to what true genre enthusiasts view as the most essential releases and that definitely sets The Academy apart from other websites.