Goblins

The cover of this album immediately made me link this band to either The Misfits or A.F.I. And listening through this debut album I was proven right in some ways. This Spanish band that was formed in 1998 in the Cordoba area makes use of that same dark, seemingly occult lyrics as AFI and the voice of Carlos Pulido at times comes near to the high typical sound of Davi Havoc. Unfortunately I'm not the biggest AFI-fan because of the vocals. But still, this band has more up its sleeve than sounding like AFI, because they deliver quite a varied mixture of hardcore-melodies with occasional back-up vocals that are easier to swallow than the average European hardcore bands, sometimes even bending towards poppy stuff. Then again they approach things furious ("Ash") and they don't mind putting in an accoustic guitar either ("The Hunting"). The distorted guitars are very well handled by these 2 guitarists and 1 bassplayer with good toggling and driven harmonies. Honestly I don't understand though why they use this dark undertone in their lyrics, because most of these songs just sound joyfull to me, but I couldn't care less: these guys prove the world again Europe has something to offer.