Black Star Furies

Italian hard rockers BLACK STAR FURIES are back with 14 songs. While the horror metal vibe can definitely be heard in the vocals, the guitars also have a strong VAN HALEN vibe (especially on the guitar solo extravaganza “1977”!.) You’ll find some dark heavy rock tunes and songs that stand somewhere between 80s hard rock and modern rock (almost nu-metal at times) (“Piece Of Your Action”, “Liz.”)
“Shirley”‘s guitar riff reminds me of DOKKEN, which is quite a good idea, since we all remember the band’s contribution in horror movies with “Dream Warriors”, “Doze” is more convincing than “Religion” when it comes to power ballads, and when the band goes boogie on “Last Kiss”, you can hear that these guys have rock’n’roll roots. “L.A. 81” is a pure fun nostalgia song, a celebration of what the Sunset Strip used to be, and the cover of FRANKIE GOES TO HOLLYWOOD‘s classic “Relax” is pure pleasure.
“Vamp In Paradise” is a fun album, it might be a bit too long for the genre, but it should be in the playlist of legions of hard horror metal freaks soon./Laurent C.

http://blackstarfuries.ozak.it/
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Looking at the name and origin (Italy), I first thought that BLACK STAR FURIES were just one more of those 80s hair metal revival bands, but I was wrong. These 3 guys actually plays modern hard rock with heavy guitars and fine vocal melodies (“Alien”, “Shiver”, “Rest Of The City”…) that are sometimes getting close to a band like AFI.
Despite the fact that there are too many ballads to my tastes on the album, it is quite easy to listen to, and you quickly find yourself getting hooked to songs like “Back In The Days”, “She Goes” or “Cigarette”.
BLACK STAR FURIES released an EP (“96th Street”) and a single in these last 5 years, but they show quite an impressive maturity on this first album./Laurent C.