With heavy riffs and shapes thrown on stage, Paganize are determined to put heavy metal back on the map. With roots from the 70's and 80's metal, where melody and twin-guitars are in focus, Paganize set the standard for heavy metal in the new Millenium!!! Paganize is based in Notodden, Norway, and have lately focused on writing music and recording demos. The band have evolved from being a sideproject for the members, to being a solid, ambitious and independent act, with one goal: To Paganize the world! Paganize have been described as a melting pot of the grands of music, parallels have been drawn to the likes of Queensrÿche, Black Sabbath, Dio, Iron Maiden, Judas Priest and Accept. The band pays little regard to this, but focus on their own style, where they mix the best from the entire metal genre. The result is hard, melodic, groovy and progressive music.
Lords Of Metal e-zine: Paganize is a relatively new band of drummer Trym from the well-known black metal giants Emperor and the death metal band Zyklon. In its three-year existence the band has released two self-financed demos in 2003 and 2005. That helped the band to score a deal with Candlelight Records, which resulted to this debut album. On the second demo (the first one is unknown to me), the band already showed a successful mixture of hard rock and heavy metal from the seventies and the early eighties. On this first long player they've perfected that style and come up with a mixture of bands like Black Sabbath and Dio and up to date power metal. The album opens with a sharp power metal riff and the first thing that strikes you from the very first second, is the outstanding production. Here and there they remind me of a band like Nevermore, but due to the use of influences from the progressive rock and metal and the high-pitched vocals of Geir Helge Fredheim (WinterStrain), the sound of old Queensr_che is audible as well. As you can guess, the songs are rather diverse and sound quite heavy in general. Although the music is not exactly original, Paganize can't directly be compared with another band, which is definitely a compliment. Besides that, the old-fashioned, somehow "dry", approach of the band sounds pleasant. Listen for example to the twin-guitars, which bands like Iron Maiden used to use a lot in the past, or the heavy groovy riffs a la Tony Iommi. And be honest, how often do you here music like this nowadays? 'Evolution Hour' has become a respectable debut album that you would expect from experienced musicians and also an album that would apply to as well old-school heavy metal fans, as to the new generation metalheads. Give it a listen! Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.