Lethal Saint-s/t

Pitch Black
2010

In the press release for Lethal Saint's debut it states "80’s-influenced youngsters PARTY LIKE IT’S 1989!". I agree with the first part about this band from Cyprus, but the release needed to rewind a few years earlier to be totally accurate. Lethal Saint sound like they could have come out in 1983-84. They obviously have a great love for the likes of Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Manowar, Saxon and other NWOBHM and classic style metal bands of the early-mid 1980's. So they put on their best black band shirts, white high-top Nikes and shreddded jeans as they tried to do honor to the bands who influenced them. The end result is they manage to capture the tone and sound of where metal was in between the NWOBHM and the dawn of thrash. They play straight up metal with direct rhythms and lots of energy. However there are some cracks around the edges. The vocals of Andreas Pougioukkas are out of tune on several occasions. He hits the medium songs well enough, but on the slow tracks he gets out of pitch and reaches too far out of his range with slightly painful results for the listener. That's the main problem. A lesser one is that the solos of guitarists Christos Papadopoulos and Andreas Kasapis are off sometimes. They start out okay, but on a few tracks it sounds they are scrambling to pluck off enough notes just to fill in a certain length. This had me thinking that they really needed to rehearse these parts a lot more. The skills are not perfect, but the spirit is strong and for the majority of the time Lethal Saint do enough to maintain my interest. Originality isn't their strongest point, but their hearts are in the right place and they hit more than enough head banging moments to make this and enjoyable and fun album despite their flaws.