We have some traditional Heavy Metal from Italy today kids. The band we have today is called VULTURES VENGEANCE and they are releasing their second album Dust Age. Italy is usually good with Metal and my expectations are high. However, I was a little disappointed with the first track “Dust Age” , which is long and not very inspiring. I can also hear some instruments out of tempo in the recording and the backing vocals are poor and somewhat funny. The band and the musicianship are fine, but the song structure and vocal melodies are all over the place so far. We follow with “Queen of the Last Light” that is much better than the first. A nicer arrangement and song structure that makes more sense, but improvements still can be made.

We follow with “Those Who Sold The World” that gets even better and is a more well rounded Metal song but with some interesting tempo changes. It is hard to pinpoint an influence for this band but I would say there is a lot of NWOBHM on it. The band starts to explore a little more despite the weak beginning of the album. You can see this in the following tracks like in “Reign of Severance” that has a galloping riff ala IRON MAIDEN, and “City of a Thousand Blades” that has a nice introductory instrumental with cool drumming and epic style guitar solos. Overall it is a good band with good musicians but the songs are failing to hook you. What is bothering me a little is the singing that despite being in tune, is a little too high for me and sometimes it becomes comical to my years like  the singing in the track “The Exiled” that is a nice classic Heavy Metal approach but the singing is not the best. The singer can reach high notes for sure, but it does not need to be all the time and on the entire song. Some songs will also have tempo issues very apparent in the recording. However, you can see that the potential is there like in the track “The Foul Mighty Temple of Men” that has a nice syncopated guitar riff that shows that the guys can be creative. For me the best of the album so far despite the poor singing and horrible backing vocals.

We end this journey with “It Holds” (unfortunately it does not) that is the mystical song in the album evoking some ethereal moments and as incredible as it main seem, a good vocal where you can hear the singer in a lower tone and he actually has a good and melodic mid range voice. Then the song gets into a heavy part and the singing gets bad again. Good potential but needs a better singer in my opinion.