The Industrial Twilight: End Zone

Thursday, January 25, 2018

End Zone - "Eclectica" [1998]

Artist: End Zone

Title: Eclectica

Genre: Progressive Metal

Country: Russia

Release date: 1998

Track List:

Alpha
The Vortex Of Reality
Hovanchina (Final)
Dual Infinity
The Remedy
Refuse/Resist (Sepultura Cover)
Afterwards

EndZone was an early band of Igor Lobanov, a former athlete and the current guitarist/vocalist of the nu-metal band Slot, which I honestly can't stant. Fortunately all three albums released by End Zone are nothing alike what he's playing now, and rightfully considered to be the classics of early Russian metal scene. Unfortunately, the 90s weren't the best time for Russian metal (and for the country in general), so EZ broke up by the end of that decade, being nowhere near as popular as Slot currently are.

Initially, during 1993-1995, they were playing technical thrash metal in the vein of Mekong Delta. This album, however, features a "lighter" form of progressive metal influenced by classical music. The quality of production and musicianship is great for its time, even despite the poor cover art and rather weak vocals, making "Eclectica" a very interesting release that definitely doesn't deserve to be forgotten:

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About this blog

I created this blog mostly because I wanted to practise my English skills, and to showcase the industrial, gothic, punk, metal, neofolk and progressive rock scene of Russia/ex-USSR and Eastern Europe (especially Hungary) in the meanwhile.

As you can see, this blog doesn't take itself seriously enough, but I hope I'm doing good enough with my reviews even if my proficiency in English is limited. Along with the aforementioned stuff from Eastern Europe, I occasionally post some classic and rare albums that aren't to be missed, and generally whatever I want. Other categories of note:

* finno-ugric rarities - various music (including pop) in minor Finno-Ugric languages which I'm interested in because of my heritage. The music from Hungary, Finland and Estonia can be found under the respective categories;

* lo-fi - various poorly recorded demos from before 2000 that are of historical importance. Most of these demos come from the USSR era, so you might want to check out the USSR category as well.

As of now, I try to post only music that has already been made free by the artists themselves, or the rare old releases that are out of print. But if you're an artist and would like me to remove the download links of your work, just contact me using the form below.

Sorry, I don't do reviews by request, I don't have the time. Moreover, I think the bands that feel the need to advertise themselves by sending their demos to as many blogs as possible are usually just plain boring. If you want to contact me for any other reason, use the contact form below.

It should be obvious enough that reviewing anything on here doesn't equals endorsement of artists' personal views. This especially concerns neofolk and martial industrial. It'd be fair enough to say that I have the same approach to the political and religious topics in these genres as Laibach do.

Many of the female musicians featured on my blog are amateur models, and in many cases their modelling work is no less interesting than their music. Right now I'm working on giving it a separate section of the blog (just in case if anyone wants my review to be only about their music and not their looks). The work is in progress, check back later if you're interested.

The title of my blog comes from a song by The Kovenant (album "SETI", 2003).