Year : 2025 (Nameless Grave Records Edition)
Style : Heavy Metal
Country : United States
Audio : 320 kbps + front
Size : 132 mb
Bio:
US heavy metal band from Florida.Project Helms Deep with John Gallagher Raven and Mike Heller featuring Ray DeTone on the track “mountains of the scorpion” have our first album mixed and mastered by Lasse Lammert.Helms Deep was formed in 2017 by guitarist and vocalist Alex Sciortino with the initial vision of forming a raw 1980s-style speed/power metal band of the likes of bands like Riot, Iron Maiden, and Judas Priest, while blending the genre with the ambiguity and atmosphere of prog and fusion when called for. Between vocals and guitar, Sciortino’s inspiration for songwriting ranges drastically, from all the ‘80s metal bands we know and love to a labyrinth of ‘70s rock, fusion, and prog which were his foundation on guitar. This project had been in the works for around five years before he linked up with drummer Mike Heller (Raven, Malignancy, ex-Fear Factory) and bassist John Gallagher (Raven) and got to work on the first Helms Deep album, “Treacherous Ways”. Following a brief, initial independent release on Bandcamp, the band was quickly discovered by Nameless Grave Records, who signed the band for an official release in 2023.
Album:
Nameless Grave Records presents “Chasing the Dragon”, the second full-length studio album from US traditional/power metal outfit Helms Deep, confirming the album for release on June 20th, 2025.Sentinel Daily editor Scott Adams usually asks for around three hundred and fifty words for an album review, but after repeated exposures to Chasing The Dragon, the new album from US power metal expositors Helms Deep, I’m confident I can do the job in far fewer. So here goes…Anything other than this is simply over egging the pudding, and you really don’t need to know more before heading out and pre-ordering the thing, but for the sake of convention and because I don’t want to receive an ear-bashing from the man at the top, Let me expand a bit more.In simple terms, what I said above is irrefutable. This is a band that knows just what it takes to weave sonic tapestries of pure gold, seismic blasts of brilliance only the detonation of a thousand suns could produce… or indeed outshine. You get the picture. At one moment – the superb title track, for instance – it’s just heads down mayhem, at another, and I’m looking at the utterly jaw dropping extravaganzas Craze of the Vampire or Red Planet here, the band take on the greats of prog metal and, well, show them how it’s done, basically.The chugging Cursed shows yet another side – the side where the band synthesises the best of eighties American radio metal and spits out a perfect nugget of same minutes later – but really you know that the musicians involved here are so accomplished you could shout a few reference points at them and they’d come up with something better than the original notion within half an hour.Seriously, they are that good, and, whilst you can’t underplay the influence of the band’s main progenitor, vocalist Alex Sciortino, in the success of the project, you also have to accept that without the presence of bassist John Gallagher from Raven, Helms Deep would be a very different beast indeed. His bass work throughout is exemplary – in fact it’s better than that, it’s often otherworldly, and the way he roves under the riffs and leads of the guitarists opens up new dimensions for songs only the crew of the Starship Enterprise have so far encountered. On top of that, his vocals bolster Sciortino’s at all the right points to provide a fabulous counterpoint to the lead singer’s more visceral offerings. These two work perfectly together, and when you throw in the undisputed talents of drummer Hal Aponte, who here throws his hat into the ring for the title of best drummer currently doing the rounds, and new guitarist Ray DeTone, you have a mighty powerful unit indeed.Amazingly, the songs just seem to keep getting better as the albums goes along; Halfway through you might imagine that the band won’t be able to outdo the pure US metal nirvana of Flight Of The Harpy; but outdo it they do, with a series of bravura performances from all concerned that simply have to be heard to be believed. Necessary Evil, perhaps the most ‘Ravenesque’ song in the set, is pure one thousand per cent proof heavy metal wonderment, let me tell you! And it’s not even the best track on the album!I know I won’t hear a better heavy metal album this year – in fact I can’t imagine hearing a better heavy metal album until the next Helms Deep album finds it’s way into my clutches. This is special stuff, and you need to get it in your collection as soon as you possibly can. Amazing!
Line-Up:
Alex Sciortino - Vocals, Guitars
Ray DeTone - Guitars (2025-present) - See also: Migliori Amici & Co, Ray DeTone, ex-Paul Di'Anno (live)
John Gallagher - Bass, Vocals - See also: Raven, ex-Killers, ex-Volture (live)
Hal Aponte - Drums (2025-present) - See also: Coldsteel, Ice Age, ex-Monolith
Tracklist:
01. Wing Chun
02. Black Sefirot
03. Chasing the Dragon
04. Cursed
05. Craze of the Vampire
06. Flight of the Harpy
07. Frozen Solid
08. Necessary Evil
09. Red Planet
10. Seventh Circle
11. Shiva’s Wrath
Download links for all albums only on our blog here: http://goodmetalandhar.do.am/
