I got to confess; until last year, for quite some time I had consciously distanced myself away from Power Metal as I felt that the genre was getting stale and lacked innovation. But boy, the genre did reinvent itself in the last year or two, just like Thrash Metal had done a little before that. So we got BLIZZARD HUNTER who have released their debut full length "Heavy Metal To The Vein" this June 19^th.

BLIZZARD HUNTER from Peru is not just your quintessential Power Metal band, as the music is much faster, leaning more towards Speed Metal as described in Metal Archives. The music is easy on ears as the sharp riffs are really catchy and with the backing vocals, you got an album full of anthems. Driven by war and victory lyrically, the songwriting seems to be bang on. And then there are songs like "My Revenge" which bring in long periods of guitar solos, giving you long eargasms. The album is unidirectional with only little variation in songwriting anywhere in the middle, which sometimes I think works for the album too. Technically the guitar work is great, except the fact that the solos are very long and sometimes may get on your nerves, and the drums are fast paced and mix well with the music. Sebastian "Dragon" Palma screams his lungs out occasionally amidst the high pitched clean vocals, which again work just fine for the band.

With polished production "Heavy Metal To The Vein" is a great album. There are no favorite songs of mine and no weak songs here. But the only major critic I have here is that the album lacks color and variety as it seems to do the same thing in all the 10 songs even though they sound great. But all in all the album has enough in it to please the old school connoisseurs of Power and Speed Metal.