Lonewolf
Division Hades

Division Hades, sounds like one of those lower tier sports series, perhaps on local level somewhere in France. This loner band is from France but sounds pretty German when it comes to the style. I reviewed them a few years ago and at first I thought that the cover looked the same, but there is a difference even though colours and motives are pretty similar, as is the music and I am not sure that it is the right stuff for the lonewolves who are isolated to avoid viruses and other stuff in the world we have today.

Musically it is fairly typical rough heavy metal in a style that is akin to German heroes like Wizard or Paragon, and made perfect by Mystic Prophecy, it is a pretty robust album. The singer has a hoarse voice and doesn’t feel very fine-tuned in his vocal presence, I am not sure he is a good vocalist. I am not really sure about the production either, it sounds pretty ordinary this album. There isn’t much variation on this album and as it is over two disks it is also very long, but you can see the second disk as bonus as it is redone old and rare songs so perhaps it can be discounted. Even if you discount that disk it is still an album that is pretty long, they have a style of music that isn’t very varied.

I cannot claim that I am very impressed with what I am hearing, not that it is a bad album – they are gruff and raw, and I usually like that kind of thing. Problem is that this album doesn’t really offer anything that feels exciting or fresh and you need that too, you cannot just have the right style and attitude, you need the songs and the novelty and those things too if you want to avoid being fast forgotten. And that is the problem, this album feels old and overplayed the first time you play it.

You will probably find Division Hades agreeable if you like simple and straightforward heavy metal and don’t require your albums to have any artistic merit. Because when you start looking and digging deeper into the music you find that there are about fifteen of these per dozen and at least 20-30 albums I hear each month are better. I don’t think this is a bad album, not at all, the problem is that there is so much competition and so many albums released that you cannot impress with not bad – you need to be great and Division Hades is not a great album.

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