Band:	Black Of The South
Album:	Nation Under Siege
Style:	Hard rock, Stoner metal
Release date:	2008
A review by:	Jeff

01. Unleashed
02. Overcomming Tyranny
03. Turmoil
04. Nation Under Siege

If I should give you the name of a country which still believes in Hard Rock, I would give you without any hesitation the name of Ireland. Maybe that some of you have heard some stuff about The Answer (if not you should have a look at it) but there is also a lot of other bands in the country which play this kind of music and Black Of The South is one of them! "Nation Under Siege" is their last demo and even if it's not really original and suffers of an average production, this is a good debut for those young Irish dudes.

Black Of The South plays classic Hard Rock with strong Southern Rock influences. If you want to understand how it sounds, you have to know that "Nation Under Siege" is a good mix between Hard Rock with big riffs a la Black Label Society. They're not so violent though and are more into the side of Hard Rock but their music is cool and full of good riffs. This is good Rock N Roll with strong melodies and catchy choruses but this is not "happy" like Airbourne and definitely the music of BOTS is a lot more angry and dark. Our guys have things to say and their music is clearly influenced by this spirit. We have good soli, good heavy riffs and a good Rock N Roll attitude on this release but of course there is nothing really new on this demo. That's the problem with the bands which chose to play Hard Rock, they're cool and their music is always pleasant but they're not really original (at least on their first releases?).

The problem with "Nation Under Siege" is that the demo suffers of a really average recording. This is a bit amateurish when you have a look on what the majority of the newcomers are able to do now. I'm not saying that it's terrible though but the band clearly deserve a better sound and I hope that they will be able to have better means of production in the future. Also, the singer can do the best like the worst. Sometime his voice is really good with a good tune but some other times this is simply out of tunes. One more time this is not really problematic, this is just a demo and I'm sure that the guys will be better with time.

"Nation Under Siege" is not really surprising but our dudes are not bad at all and if they can fix the little problems that we can hear on this release I'm sure that it will be a lot- more convincing. Right now I cannot talk about revelation but they have good ideas and I like the "dark" attitude of their music so let's keep an eye on Black Of The South and I'm sure that we will have something nice through their next production.