We are visiting Greece today (always nice) with some self entitled “modern” Metal as the genre names and titles keeps growing. The band is TELMA and they are releasing their second full album Awakening. Modern Metal may mean heavy and distorted guitars with dissonant chords as there are plenty on the first track “Crystal Clear”. The same can be said about the vocals that are clear with very melodic vocal lines. We follow the formula of MASTODON on the second track “Belly Of The Beast”. This means memorable riffs and some weird but captivating moods throughout the song. Despite the melody added in the vocal lines, the vocals can be a little raspier as you can hear in “Stray Dogs” that has a more aggressive approach and some mean guitar riffs provided by the competent duo of guitar players Mark Kotoulas and Kostas Koutsomarkos.

Despite having 2 guitars, and some intricate riffs with dissonant chords, not every song will have some guitar solo dexterity as you can (not) hear in the good “Seventeen” that also has some intricate tempos provided by the good drummer Mike Tziastoudis that together with bass player Filip Kotoulas, are the backbone to the music with tight rhythm sections and punchy fills that give the songs an extra layer of power. We pass the halfway point with the track that names the album, “Awakening” that starts much more tamed than the others with a soft melodic introduction before the heavy guitars come in. However, the song remains somewhat tamed as this sounds to me like a hard ballad to me. The highlight on this track is the nice vocal work of Anthony Kyritsis with some tasty backing vocals. Anthony has a good range and displayed a lot of different styles of Metal singing , together with a lot of melody. “Journey Of Dust”is next and presents us with some syncopated drum and guitar riffs bringing another flavour to the mix. Is good to hear that the guys like to explore the genre and create new approaches to riffs and tempos.

Lyrically the album touches on themes of relationship, power, loss, and defiance and the tunes are very well crafted offering a variety of moods and interesting song structures as you can hear in “Got No Rhythm” ( that is a lie as this song is actually very groovy) with a killer guitar riff and for that gets the title of the best of the album so far. We end our journey with another banger on “The price Of Freedom” that tells us how hard it is to keep our most valuable commodity. Good album from TELMA. If you’re a fan of bands like MASTODON, GOJIRA or OPETH, this album certainly has all the elements you may like proving they are a force to be reckoned with in the “modern” Metal scene.