Coventry Metalists Scattering Ashes were on stage at Download Festival last year and have just released their third album The Gift, Fighting Boredom’s Adrian Bloxham has a soft spot for a bit of Heavy Metal and has reviewed the record below.
I’ve told the story before but I feel like I should tell it again. The first music I got completely captured by, to the point of obsession, was Heavy Metal. At thirteen I went to see Saxon in Leicester and that was it, hook line and sinker Metal all the way. I can still name members from the key NWOBHM bands and although I strayed far and wide from the Metal path it still catches me unawares every now and again. I hear something and I’m back down the front in my denim jacket shouting along grinning my head off.
This is the third album by Coventry’s Scattering Ashes and as with the last is another step forward for them. They draw from across Metal’s myriad of genres, dragging in Maidenesque operatic symphonic guitars, machine gun drums from the Thrash giants and a grindcore growl that harmonises nicely with the usual angry, hard melodic vocal.
The sound is rounded and full, a hardcore drum and bass combination providing a solid strong backdrop to the songs. The vocal is a classic old school metal clear sound juxtaposed with the grinding growl that smashes into the tunes when it’s needed. But this is once again all about the guitars, a massive guitar sound that just keeps getting bigger and stronger. This is the sort of Metal album I fell in love with when I was a kid and even after all these years it lights the spark inside me.
Hard as nails and bigger than you can imagine, The Gift is an album for Scattering Ashes to be proud of.
