By: Tordah

Posted: May 12, 2006

That Finland has a lot of metal bands is nothing new but I noticed there are surprisingly few bands that play progressive metal. Manitou is one of these few prog bands and hopefully they can gain some recognition and success with their new album “"Deadlock". This is the band's second album and it showcases an impressive band with great musicians that have further developed and perfected their sound.

Manitou plays a mix of old-school heavy metal and progressive metal. Queensrÿche and Dio influences can be heard but Manitou definitely have their own unique sound that is a bit heavier than those two giants. The band sounded like veterans already on their debut and they have evolved even further on "Deadlock". The riffs are even more killer than before and vocalist Markku Pihlaja does a very good performance here and convinces me that he's the perfect frontman for Manitou. His raw heavy metal voice brings vocalists like Jorn Lande and Pasi Rantanen (Thunderstone) to my mind. The music is accessible and incredibly catchy. The single 'Fools In Control' is a fantastic track that contains surprisingly many twists and turns considering the short length of the track. That's pretty much the formula for all the other tracks here as well. Variation, catchiness and just pure headbanging fun is what Manitou offers. It all feels fresh and original and not like something I've heard 20 times already. It's a shame that their cover of the old Michael Jackson classic 'Beat It' is only featured on the "Fools In Control" single. That cover has to be one to be of the best metal versions of a pop song I've ever heard.

It's only a matter of taste which Manitou album you consider to be the better. "Deadlock" is a bit heavier and hard-hitting while the debut album "The Mad Moon Rising" had more of a hard rock production and feeling along with a more laidback and atmospheric sound. I also noticed a lack of keyboards in "Deadlock" and that might be the reason why it sounds so different. As I mentioned earlier the songs are all quite short (at least by progressive metal standards). Aside the 9 min long 'Black Meadow' the songs are between 3 and 4 minutes long. That doesn't mean that the songs lack depth or progressive elements. For instance, I had passed off the track 'State of Mind' as an "okay" track after giving the album two spins or so. After listening to the album again I started to like that track more and more, suddenly realizing its greatness. I guess that's one of Manitou's biggest strengths how they manage to be both accessible and fun to listen to while creating deep music that grows on you with time. A good example of another band that manages to pull this off would be Amorphis with their new album "Eclipse".

The only downside with the album is that the songs tend to blend into each other and that some of the riffs sound too similar to each other. The good definitely outweighs the bad here though and the bad things are only minor complaints. "Deadlock" is a great album that should appeal to any metal-head who enjoys excellent riffs, strong vocals and mesmerising song-writing abilities. I hope we get to hear more from Manitou in the future and that they can keep up the good work.

Rating: 8,5/10

[link]Manitou[/link] website

Review of The Mad Moon Rising

Distributed in Denmark and kindly supplied by Target

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