I’m gonna put about as much effort into this intro as McNulty does into not drinking.

Today’s first video comes from Anubis Gate, whose self-titled album released earlier this year rocks my world like my world hasn’t been rocked Queensryche started sucking. This video doesn’t so much rock my world, though; the off-center shots of the band members playing their instruments are kinda cool (it’s a novel idea), but I could do entirely without the shots of the singer scribbling the lyrics down on a piece of paper. It’s kinda like a lyric video, but not… and the whole angsty writing-the-lyrics-down-on-a-pad thing has been done almost as much as the band-in-a-warehouse thing. And all of a sudden there’s a party in the basement towards the end? Zuh? Narrative much? “Golden Days” is kind of an obvious choice for a single too, which I’ve got a problem with, because it doesn’t represent the generally heavier album well at all. Oh well; their loss.

Click to read more…

Anubis Gate’s new self-titled album really took me by surprise; I went in expecting a standard Euro power metal affair but ended up falling in love with a complex, classic progressive metal masterpiece. I’ve already written about how this album reminds me of Queensryche if Queensryche updated their approach a bit for the modern age and didn’t start sucking, but I should add that Anubis Gate are very much in the same class of more modern bands like Iced Earth and Into Eternity, too; fans of those bands are surely gonna dig the shit out of this record, like I do.

Listen for yourself: Metal Insider is streaming the entire record. You’ll be hooked [and surprised] from the first song.

-VN

Imagine a world in which Chris DeGarmo never left Queensryche and the band kept writing awesome albums into their sunset years instead of veritable suckfests like Dedicated to Chaos (I’ll even give them the benefit of the doubt by including Promised Land in the “awesome album” list). Fortunately you don’t really need to try very hard to imagine such a world, because Anubis Gate exist and are pretty much single-handedly carrying the Queensryche torch into a new era, only faster, heavier and more modern-sounding. The new self-titled album by infamous MS troll Ziltoid’s favorite band is full of delicious riffs, proggy but not overly bloated songs, sharp musicianship and a general sense of Queensryche-ness that had me hooked from the very first time I listened to it. I was expecting nothing at all going on, but I’ve listened at least 5 times since; it’s that good!

Carlos Ramirez at Noisecreep knows exactly what I’m talking about. “Golden Days” wouldn’t have been my first choice of songs to premiere; it’s good but not necessarily representative of the album as a whole, so think of it as the “Silent Lucidity” to the band’s usual diet of “Jet City Woman”s and “Revolution Calling”s. But it’s still a solid tune. Check it out at Noisecreep, then come back here and commiserrate the state of modern-day Queensryche in our comments section.

-VN

Anubis Gate have begun writing material for a new record to be released in 2010. Halt the presses! Decent but unspectacular obscure band that sounds like a million other mainstream bands is working on a new record! Zilty’s creaming his pants in anticipation.

-VN