Steel Strutures

Although it ironically coincided with the compact disc format's slow but inexorable march toward likely extinction, the third millennium's first decade witnessed an incredible boom in CD reissues of obscure ‘70s hard rock bands; bands whose careers quickly floundered or never even took off due to any number of reasons, like the subject of this review, London's Steel Mill. Like many of these commercially failed entities, Steel Mill made the fatal mistake of attempting to partake in the relatively isolated worlds of both progressive and heavy rock, instead of committing to just one or the other, and so their sole LP, 1972's Green Eyed God, fell through the cracks of consumer tastes and wasn't even released in the U.K. until 1975, three years after the group's demise. Be that as it may, few heavy prog bands favored such a dramatic clash between their artier musical pretensions and more visceral instrumental instincts than this London quintet, resulting in fascinatingly schizophrenic numbers boasting as much inner city grime and bluster as they do pastoral purity and whimsy…

Parody metal powerhouse NANOWAR OF STEEL turns to the musical roots of their homeland, bringing heavy new life to traditional Italian music on their new album Italian Folk Metal (out July 2 on Napalm Records)! Filled with references to Italian folklore, NANOWAR OF STEEL puts its own comedic metal twist on the various traditional sounds of their beautiful country. Each song on Italian Folk Metal is performed in a distinct style of Italian folk music: Napoli-based sounds of musica neomelodica clash with melodic guitar sweeps on “Scugnizzi of the Land of Fires“ and speedy accordions (prominently known from northern Italy‘s mazurka) are layered with dizzying guitar solos on “La Mazurka del Vecchio che Guarda i Cantieri“. The powerful blast beats and violins on Italian Folk Metal‘s album opener “L'Assedio di Porto Cervo“ prove that NANOWAR OF STEEL are absolute aficionados of both Italian folk music and heavy music.