Their sudden publicity and huge amount of clicks on their myspace site Irish progressive metallers ERA VULGARIS might have due to the fact that the new Queens Of The Stone Age record bears the same name. It’s not meant judgmental in any way, just to mention this fact to avoid confusions, because this Irish quartet hasn’t anything in common with the sound of the desert rockers.
ERA VULGARIS springs from a completely different world, the classic metal scene, just enhanced by many Thrash Metal adventures, progressive elements from the Rock and Metal genre and some Pop-like moments, blended in a more compact and catchy way as one might be accustomed to from familiar Thrash Metal bands.
If you lean and think back a little, back the late 80’s/early 90’s, you might get reminded of complex and snappy bands that Metallica-like indulged in Bay Area Thrash metal. Just add now a pinch of 70’s ProgRock, a dash of instrumental Swiss reminiscence of early Coroner and spice up the brew with latent detectable Pop and Led Zeppelin leanings. What Stirs Within emerges as a downright thrilling as well as varied record, powerful but also matured and elaborated. Songs are partly quite long and draw on plentiful resources, finding its climax in the 11 minutes running highlight Iram, which sounds like a dramatic and dynamic summary of the entire record and gives an outlook of a possibly exciting future. Great album!
What Stirs Within got probably unleashed to a perfect time, where bands like Machine Head surprisingly have the heart again to create complex music. In their slipstream bands like ERA VULGARIS might come across the perfect ground to establish themselves to a higher degree of popularity.