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VENUS
Project Lamda EP

Pure Steel (2022)
Rating: 6.5/10

Bridging the gap between traditional heavy metal, power metal and sci-fi infused thrash is Greek outfit Venus, a talented twosome who bring heaps of melody in this, their debut EP which may not appeal to all due to its vocal variances of scratchy, almost black metal-styled rasps to clearer, soaring nuances. Even so, this four-track opus is creative, experimental and precise in its assault.

Opener ‘Art Of Illusions’ feels progressive in its scurries even if much of its design leaves me cold with its technical prowess. Flashes of Vektor, hints of Vortex, and that’s where these guys are at as Giorgos Verginis (guitar / harsh vocals) and Antonis Avtzis (guitar / clean vocals) bring a rather humourless, barren but decidedly cosmic affair with those glinting speedy dashes and raking arrays of dissonance.

It’s all very polished, clever and yet somehow grey, scraping the ears with its complex tirades but never feeling truly accessible. That’s not to say this is a bewildering tech-fest, far from it, it’s just that the Gothic, mournful bellows which open ‘Helios Abandoned’ feel a tad alien, unwelcoming, even as the duo races into a sneering, hasty black metal design. So, to call it thrash seems incorrect, and it’s certainly not the power metal you may expect.

‘Multilingual Monstrosities’ sort of speaks for itself with its title, an intentionally wiry, sharply angled framework that prods with its axe work and leaves one feeling lacking in warmth as it jars with a Voivod-stance while hinting at Anacrusis, but again, not as nostalgic or grounded.

The duo are clearly happy with their extra-terrestrial expressions as ‘Project Lamda’ snarls and swipes with a pinched aggression. Lyrically the guys are very much of the sci-fi status, “13 years ago a spacecraft was created, what’s left of earth destroyed, The secret isolated, They saw us crumble, They kept us secrets, We saw them departing from below, They stink”. That’s just an example of such celestial prowess, but in a sense there’s something here for all those who like icy, uninviting yet thinking man’s metal. It’s just that the trajectory it takes is not one I wish to follow for fear of cosmic inhalation, resulting in my bloated corpse popping somewhere near Mars.

Neil Arnold

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