Godiva - Godiva

*=Staff's pick	The Gate (instrumental) Razorblade Romantic* Heavy Metal Thunder* One Shot Nightmare* Cold Blood Where Angels Die* Riding Through Time* Let the Tanks Roll Bullshit Lover Sinner*

Genre	Heavy Metal	Anthony De Angelis	Vocals
Tracks	11	Sammy Lasagami	Guitar
Runningtime	45 Min.	-	Guitar
Label	Limb Music	Mitch Koontz	Bass
Release	22 Sept. 2003	Peter Garder	Drums
Country	Switzerland	-	Keyboards
Similar artists	Primal Fear, Judas Priest, Sinner, U.D.O.

With acts like Suid Akra, Krokus, Crystal Ball and Shakra, Switzerland begins to become sort of a hot spot for interesting metal and now yet another Swiss band's trying its wings. Godiva is here with their self-titled debut release and is being presented as a band that plays classic heavy metal inspired by Judas Priest with touches of dirty Motorhead rock'n roll.

Well, that's not at all entirely accurate and to describe Godiva as a band that lets classic German metal leaven the main part of their song material is how I would put it. The alleged Motorhead resemblances probably refer to the tracks that have some more metal-rock tendencies but there's only a concept likeness the way I see it and not to the actual band. But instead there are bands that Godiva absolutely can be compared with. Resemblances with German metal celebrities like Primal Fear, Accept, U.D.O and some touches of Grave Digger in the heavy grinding riffing are in great favour here and I have to say that Godiva do it very good. The vocalist Anthony De Angelis has a voice that basically is a mix of Ralf Scheepes, Rob Halford (hence the Priest similarities), Peavy Wagner and Udo Dirkschneider. With a few exceptions, he sings more like Wagner and Udo in the verse sections and goes more high pitch like Scheepes and Halford in the choruses and more metal screaming features. It's very obvious that English isn't his mother tounge but if you can live with a little poor prenounciation at times he's more and well qualified to rise to the occation.

The heavy grinding guitar riffing goes in the undisputable Grave Digger/Primal Fear/Sinner/Accept style and the album is full of many exploding intros along those lines. The power chords, rhythm sections and solos delivered by Sammy Lasagami are very good and any of those above mentioned bands should be real proud to have him in the line up. The heavy grinding guitar pace combined with the efforts of De Angelis vocals are definitely the backbone in this release, which also make it almost the perfect party metal album. There's enough crunchy riffing here to really bang your head to and tracks like Razorblade Romantic, Heavy Metal Thunder, Nightmare and Where Angels Die give the album some serious purchasin' power.

If you're a sucker for classic German metal and praise bands like above all Accept, U.D.O and Primal Fear you should absolutely check out this four Swiss piece. They don't come to equal terms with their German collegues just yet but Godiva has enough juicy stuff to be more than sufficient for your daily dose of metal. Listen to Razorblade Romantic on their label's homepage and you'll begin to realise that Godiva is a real good band that given some routine and more experience will catapult much higher in the metal realm. A great start with lots of potential for more!