I have always believed that music transcends political and geographical boundaries and is one of the few things along with sports that can bring peace and unity to this messed up world. With me being from India, I thought it is a good time to check out one of Pakistan's new Heavy Metal flag-bearers BLACKHOUR's new full length album "Sins Remain", which was released earlier this year.

The album starts with "Losing Life", which oscillates between fast and slower tempos. With clean screaming vocals, and chaotic guitar work the sound of BLACKHOUR appears different from anything that I have heard before. The depressing, screaming vocals of Tayyab Rehman are one of the highlights of the band, as they definitely bring a new overall dimension to the music.

"Wind of Change" is a song that you will want to play really loud when you are driving full-speed down a highway. The guitar work here is really catchy and you can't help but air guitar to this one. The band then goes full Monty with its 9 minute epic in "Life Brings Death, Love Brings Misery". There is lots of variety and flavour to this song, but the track did test my patience towards the latter half, as it got quite repetitive with its riffs.

"Battle Cry" has some very predictable epic war/ battle style guitar work vocals, but it's not bad. There are some sharp, fast solos towards the end as the song becomes really aggressive and loud in nature. But I must observe that if the band were trying to create an anthem in the latter track, it fell short of that. Even though this is Heavy Metal, I actually liked the fact that the band decided to finish this album with a slow, 8-minute guitar strummed song in "Sins Remain"; mostly because the song doesn't disappoint and is worth its effort. There are a few heavy parts - sprinkled mostly towards the end - but the song is largely a slow number, which works really well.

With this being the band's 2^nd full-length album, "Sins Remain" is actually a record that is worth checking out for everybody. It's not ground-breaking by any means, but it has something new to offer for the seasoned Metalheads out there irrespective of which genre you are into.