Habu Distant Thunder

"Vampiro" is the band’s ninth studio album, and it keeps alive a trend Helstar started when they came back from a hiatus at the end of the last decade. That trend being the release of one high-energy, high-quality heavy metal album after another. It’s been more than 30 years since the Helstar debut and the band sounds just as vital and inspired as ever. Revisiting the "Nosferatu" theme definitely seemed to help here, giving the band a classic frame of reference as well as a sinister subject to go with the wicked riffs found on "Vampiro".

ALIVE started out as an acoustic album, but little by little I realized that there was no way I could interpret all of the songs acoustically, so I gave into electricity!

The Storm is an excursion into deep, often un rooted ambience. Stearns can completely transform a space with his swirling layers of sounds. Environments cascade atop each other as the Balinese "Ketjak" chante merges from a white noise of rain and barber-pole glissando, but he also leavens The Storm with welcome respites of minimally drawn melody. The Last Feeling is a techno-tribal trance work of plaintive flute melody and hypnotic hand percussion, while The Light in the Trees illustrates the deep melancholy Stearns can evoke with just a few well-placed chords.

The Storm is an excursion into deep, often un rooted ambience. Stearns can completely transform a space with his swirling layers of sounds. Environments cascade atop each other as the Balinese "Ketjak" chante merges from a white noise of rain and barber-pole glissando, but he also leavens The Storm with welcome respites of minimally drawn melody. The Last Feeling is a techno-tribal trance work of plaintive flute melody and hypnotic hand percussion, while The Light in the Trees illustrates the deep melancholy Stearns can evoke with just a few well-placed chords.

The Estonian composer Veljo Tormis won wider recognition with his choral music in the 1960s and by the end of the 1970s he became one of the most outstanding composers receiving commissions from many countries where Estonian choruses had performed his works. His preferred genres have been large-scale choral compositions and cycles of songs