ALMEIDA - 'Social Media Circus' CD review

ALMEIDA - 'Social Media Circus' CD review

Anyone that picked up these guys' debut 'Fantastic Massacre', or has seen them live or even heard them before will know that they're mental. Utter loonatics, no doubt about it. They play a highly technical and thrashy punk / metal amalgamation (that even breaks for a short reggae rhythm in the second song and has a circus-y bit of keys in the fourth) that is relentlessly lightning fast on the drums in blasts and skate punk rhythms, both riffy and mathcore-twiddly on the guitars, bass heavy, and vocalled with a combination of deep, demonic growls, and soaring, power-metal melodies that at times reach ridiculous heights. Comparisons will always be drawn to bands like PROTEST THE HERO, but ALMEIDA definitely have their own sound and style (it's more skatepunk than metal really; think a heavier PROPAGANDHI), and if you're not daunted by very technical and proggy song structures, they're an awesome listen, and somehow fantastically tight live. The whole thing is musically sublime as always, but credit to Tom because lyrically this is class (I don't know how on earth he writes to this stuff), and he has some real stand-out moments on here... but I'll let you find them for yourself. So yeah, an ace follow up to 'FM', and they've made a video to the shortest song on here, 'Payday', so that would be a great place to start if you like metal / thrash / prog / tech / skatepunk crossovers...

http://www.almeidaband.co.uk/

https://www.facebook.com/almeidaband/

xox

Almeida - 'Fantastic Massacre' review

Almeida - 'Fantastic Massacre'

Here's another review from 'The Screever' issue two...

"These boys from Southern UK are pretty sick; there are a lot of bands around at the moment that fuse a bunch of styles into a technical mash-up, but ALMEIDA (pronounced Al-May-Der..?) do so with a little more skate-punk speed than most. It's a lot like PROTEST THE HERO (including a similarly high-pitched lead vocalist), but with a more melodic thrash-punk leaning, and a lovely horror / black-metal vibe... and yes, it's as interesting as that sounds, and to mix things up even more, there's a rather bouncy and quite lovely instrumental acoustic track somewhere in the middle. They're not afraid to write long songs, the title track running to over seven minutes, but have some quite wonderful little melodies if you're willing to find them. As a starter, check out the opener 'Kinslayer', which is one of the shorter and catchier tunes. Highly recommended for fans of PTH, but even folks into old BODOM and stuff may dig this; a pretty solid self-release from a bunch of super-talented chaps."

You can get this album from Almeida's webshop at:

http://almeida.bigcartel.com/

or 'like' them on Facebook at:

http://www.facebook.com/Almeidaofficial

xox