21st Century Metal Net

This 3-song demo entitled "The Discipline Of Steel" is the first release from a new unsigned young melodic metal band from my favorite country Finland. Is their band name KIUAS a Finnish word? Kyll�, ah well, yes, it means "Sauna stove" in English. To explain briefly, it's a source of the sauna's heat. This name might give you a strange impression for a metal band, but if you take it into consideration that this band comes from FINLAND and "KIUAS" plays an important role for their traditional well-known sauna, you'll get an interesting vision about this band through its name: (a new source of metal's heat from Finland!!) There have been lots of new bands coming out from Finland following the success of STRATOVARIUS and playing melodic stuffs, but in the near future KIUAS will surely be the dividing line of this STRATO-phenomenon in Finland's melodic metal scene. The first 2 songs they offer on this demo are tight-composed nice melodic metal with heavy guitars and atmospheric keys with some acoustic elements. "Until We Reach The Shore" gives you a bit of gothic feel, while "Behind The Glass" has even more 70's progressive rock tastes with modern technical performance. Vocals on both songs are quite straight and the melody itself is less mellow than you might expect from the word "melodic metal". I have to admit, however, that both of the songs are not really creative and attractive enough to bring them a great record deal... but WAIT! the title track of this demo including one-minute long intro gave me a megaton-class impact at a first listen! This 12-minute long number does have something for a great thing!! Melodic (not mellow, once again!), brave and wicked! Using a talking part from an English movie scene (incl. Finnish language part) effectively for intro and development, KIUAS showed us their promising potential to make a great composition with various elements. Long and complicated, but powerful and straight. This song still gives me a vast fantasy to a nordic land... All in all, my biggest apprause goes to this brilliant "The Discipline Of Steel" although there still seem to be many points to be improved, especially sound production and vocal performance. I just can't wait for their next songs anyway... good fortune? or misfortune? That's the deal.

(Reviewed by Masa)