Heavy Metal Reviews
Heavy metal in all its varieties, and from all eras, is the bread and butter of Kevy Metal, if the name of the site had not given this away yet. All Album of the Week reviews about heavy metal albums published on Kevy Metal can be found right here.
Since I didn’t start properly tagging my reviews until a couple of years in, these aren’t all the heavy metal reviews I have done over the years. If you are looking for something specific, you can always search by band name or release title using the search bar at the bottom of the page.
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Album of the Week 47-2025: Ningen Isu – Mahoroba
Like clockwork, Ningen Isu releases another album just over two years after their last one. For many bands, a release schedule like that would inevitably lead to running on auto-pilot after a while. But even though Ningen Isu has a sound that is immediately identifiable, the Japanese power trio somehow…
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Album of the Week 46-2025: Sortilège – Le Poids de l’Âme
After Sortilège essentially split in two about five years ago, the version of the band fronted by Christian ‘Zouille’ Augustin it the only one that managed to put together some new material. Obviously, with a band legendary enough to be able to just keep touring as a legacy act, there…
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Album of the Week 44-2025: Aria – Kogda Nastanyet Zavtra
Aria celebrates its fortieth anniversary this year. Many veteran bands would be on auto-pilot after such a long period of uninterrupted activity, releasing a compilation album or a live release to mark the occasion. Ever since their best singer Mikhail Zhitnyakov joined the band in 2011, however, Aria has been…
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Album of the Week 39-2025: Dolmen Gate – Echoes of Ancient Tales
Last year, Portugal’s Dolmen Gate completely blew me away with their incredible debut album ‘Gateways of Eternity‘. No 2024 release had as many melodies that got stuck in my head seemingly randomly, even though catchy choruses aren’t necessarily the focus of Dolmen Gate’s epic heavy metal sound. Clearly the mark…
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Album of the Week 37-2025: Sölicitör – Enemy in Mirrors
Out of all the American old school heavy metal bands that popped up over the last decade or so, Sölicitör is probably the one that appeals to me most. This is at least in part due to the fact that they don’t quite present themselves as a period piece as…
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Album of the Week 36-2025: Helstar – The Devil’s Masquerade
Anyone who thinks that Helstar’s post-reunion albums sound a bit too modern should definitely give ‘The Devil’s Masquerade’ a spin. While no one will mistake the album for one of Helstar’s earlier works, not in the least because it has a thick, beefy production job, it is notably less borderline…
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Album of the Week 34-2025: Helloween – Giants & Monsters
Helloween’s second album with their supersized all-star line-up is a fairly logical follow-up to what they were doing on ‘Helloween‘ (2021). ‘Giants & Monsters’ features a similar mix of a contemporary, bombastic take on the power metal sound the band pioneered in the eighties, and occasional AOR leanings, but it…
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Album of the Week 33-2025: Burning Witches – Inquisition
Burning Witches is at its best when they go one of two specific directions: either leaning fully into the more theatrical aspects of their sound, which is what made ‘The Witch of the North‘ their best album so far, or focusing on all-out aggression. The latter is exactly what makes…
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Album of the Week 32-2025: Onmyo-za – Ginrei Gozen
Onmyo-za has a clearly defined style, to the point where even bands that try to imitate them end up not sounding all that much like them. The exact balance between their traditional heavy metal and seventies hard rock riffs, their very accessible melodic sensibilities, their subtle folky touches, and the…
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