WITCHCURSE -

WITCHCURSE - HEAVY METAL POISON - INFERNO  
Witchcurse’s Heavy Metal Poison album is not a terrible, wimpy or sagging turd of a metal album. The Greek band stays true to its roots and hands over a full-length record replete with genuine heavy metal set in the early '80s.
The band’s offence, rather, comes from the entirely derivative nature of the record including, but not limited to, its skinning the debut Iron Maiden record every which way possible. Song after song rips off, copies and clones Iron Maiden circa 1979-1980. The band even begins its debut with an eponymous song just like you guessed who. Given that, and the band’s weaker than average singer, Witchcurse needs to change and improve its game for it to have tenure longer than a stifled debut.
The album begins with some keyboards and an accentuated intro by a wizened old man who is clearly no Orson Welles. From there Iron Mai... Witchcurse lunges into dual guitar harmonies and loads and loads of early NWOBHM fun. The vocals of Possessed are gruff and often stretched. I Don’t Want To Grow Up is a knock-off of Twisted Sister’s We’re Not Gonna Take It down to its guitar tone. The title has a punk vibe. Heavy Metal kamikaze has a guitar lead lifted off... you guessed it... Phantom Of The Opera and features a couple of better screams. Another track which bears mentioning simply for its title is Hard Rockin’ Man In 2010.
Heavy Metal Poison would be fun had the band not pushed the envelope on unoriginality, had a better-looking witch on the cover or obtained a better sound. Witchcurse has more heart than brains for now and not in a positive way. For now, this thing is cursed all around aside from a solid choice of genres. - Ali “The Metallian”