Artist: CRIMINAL
Album: AKELARRE (CD)

Release date: 2011
Media type: CD

Not ones to give up easily, the remaining members vowed to carry on and recruited Olmo Cascallar from the Basque band Gamora to fill the vacant spot. The band went on to record their seventh album “Akelarre”, a lesson in back-to-basics that sees CRIMINAL concentrating on its historic strengths: killer riffs, relentless groove, harsh yet intelligible vocals and melodic solos. Extreme yet catchy, CRIMINAL‘s music is up there with the biggest in the genre, minus the cheese, pretentiousness and pseudo-emotional whining.

The lyrical contents of social unrest, governmental and corporate control and religious intolerance were penned by someone who actually lived under a dictatorial regime. Someone who experienced censorship and persecution first-hand, as opposed to bands who sing about violence and revolution, when raised with the privileges of European social democracy.

Produced by bassist Dan Biggin at his HVR Studios in Suffolk, UK, “Akelarre” boasts a modern yet natural sound that is miles away from the sterile, overedited, overtriggered, no-dynamics productions that are the standard today.

While the band is, and will always be, a household name in South America – especially in Chile, where they recently supported Metallica in front of 55,000 raging metalheads – CRIMINAL have inexplicably been flying, more or less, under the radar in Europe. The band, however, are determined to change this.

With most so-called metal heroes content with living the rest of their careers revisiting the albums that made them popular decades ago, CRIMINAL keep raising the bar, delivering one great album after another, showing they are as hungry as ever, and determined to reap the rewards for all the years of hard work and struggle.

CRIMINAL – or rather CRIMINALLY UNDERRATED!?

TRACKLIST:

1. Order from chaos
2. Resitance is futile
3. The ghost we summoned
4. Akellare
5. State of siege
6. Tyrannicide
7. Feel the void
8. The power of the dog
9. Vows of silence
10. La Santa Muerte

LINE-UP:

Anton Reisenegger – guitar, vocals
Olmo Cascallar – guitar
Zac O’Neil – drums
Dan Biggin – bass