LIONS OF THE SOUTH a Heavy Metal band from Florida, with a heavy yet classic sound with plenty of fury and technical playing on offer. Their debut album "Chronicles Of Aggression" is a great start to their career, showing off the band's sound nicely.

Opening with the instrumental "Awakening", Atmospheric noises introduce us to clean guitars and then a progressively heavier sound as the track continues with tense guitar chords giving us a feel for what will come. "Vicious Cycle" capitalises on this with a powerful intro riff and some cool drum beats. The song kicks in at a great fast pace with lots of heavy riffs, powering along underneath a well performed aggressive vocals.

The album has lots of different sounds on offer, from the strange clean sounds of "Mirroring Hells", a song with plenty of atmosphere that gets really heavy later on, to more straight up thrashy songs like "A Call To Act" which has lots of fast and technical riffs. However the pacing is quite similar throughout, mostly fast and heavy in each song at some point or another. It certainly serves them well, but it's not particularly dynamic. This can work of course, especially for heavier bands like this, but it's always good when a band can be a bit more dynamic with their sound. This is very much a Heavy Metal album though!

The album closes with "Countdown", which with its bluesy riffs is a standout on the album. Some cool playing here with some cool hooks going on. There's a bit of a Megadeth feel here, with some grooving basslines going on underneath it all. A cool clean section midway through with a nice solo adds to things here, and this is a great song overall!

The production is pretty good, especially for a first album. Everything is nice and clear, with plenty of chunk in the rhythm guitars. The Drum sound and the vocals stand out in particular for this, well recorded and mixed.

This is a good debut album from LIONS OF THE SOUTH, and hopefully the band will offer more in terms of songwriting in the future - they certainly have the chops to pull the Heavy Metal style off though!