Widow – “On Fire”
The men and woman of Widow are not your usual heavy metal: it’s traditional, Iron Maiden-ish (guitarwise) metal with clear singing and death/black screaming and a horror element. “The Preacher’s Daughter,” for example, has Lili and Cristof singing a man-and-woman dialogue. Lili does traditional singing, while he does clear vocals and growling. It’s a bit of a schizophrenic, horror, old King Diamond-ish song. The Iron Maiden element: 0the guitars sound like they’re singing the words/chorus, too. Widow sounds like a band from the New Wave of British Heavy Metal. The sound is vintage, classic heavy metal. Actually, the production and singing also has that quality: not polished; it’s gritty, as well as oldschool-sounding (is it on purpose or lack of money?); the singing is not air-raid siren, either; it’s traditional, but it’s not really high, like Primal Fear. A clarification, the screamed vocals are important for this band. It is constant, always present; it is there, but it is used selectively, not in an overwhelming fashion. If you like traditional old-school metal and are always looking for lesser known, underground bands to check out, it would behoove you to search this.