The Greek band Alphastate was formed in 2013 and two years later they released their debut album called Out of the Black. You can read our review of this debut album here. Now Alphastate, with vocalist Manos Xanthakis, guitarist Pete Breaker, bass player Dimitris Tsounakas and drummer Fivos Andriopoulos, released the successor of Out of the Black. This successor, titled The Grind, is released on April 3rd via Sliptrick Records.
On The Grind, Alphastate plays a very melodic, but also very heavy form of heavy metal. The heavy metal influence is mostly coming from Manos Xanthakis’ vocals, which are also the most melodic aspect of Alphastate’s music. They regularly remind you of, for example, Iron Maiden. These vocals fit Alphastate’s music very well. For example, listen to the very melodic track Speak Your Mind in which Manos’ vocals are very well-fitting.
In the more march-like track Phantom Desires, the vocals combined with the music, including djenty guitars, sounds perfect and almost epic. This track sounds like the perfect opening track of an Alphastate show.
Instrumentally The Grind is very melodic, but it also can be very heavy. Guitarist Pete Breaker plays very tight and knows how to produce a very awesome sound from his guitar. His riffs as well as his solos sound very nice. For example, listen to his solos in the aforementioned Speak Your Mind or Behind The Dark. The latter one especially is very guitar-driven and also includes a big role for the cymbals of Fivos Andriopoulos’ drum kit.
My personal favorites of the nine tracks on The Grind are the three tracks in the middle, Theater of Lies, The Grind and Forevermore. These three tracks are all pretty melodic, with The Grind and Forevermore being a bit more complex and heavier than Theater of Lies. Manos’ vocals also shows a bit more rawness at some moments in Forevermore.
However, Theater of Lies is my most favorite of these three tracks. This track starts with a very nice intro and keeps sounding very epic during the entire track. While listening to this track the thought of Alphastate playing a sold out show in a gigantic arena comes to mind. Under the dark sky Alphastate closes their very awesome show with this very nice track, while everybody attending looks back at this great show.
With The Grind, Alphastate delivers a very nice album, in which a lot of variation can be heard. This album is highly recommended to everyone who likes heavy metal and/or some melody in their music.
Alphastate Facebook
Alphastate Twitter
Hi!
I’m Tim van Velthuysen and I started DutchMetalManiac back in 2014. I’m 29 years old and I live in Nijmegen, The Netherlands. Of course, I like metal, but I can also appreciate other musical styles.
In addition to DutchMetalManiac I also have a personal website on which I’ll post various things that won’t fit on DutchMetalManiac, but might be interesting for you as well. It’s in Dutch though.
