What to think about Austrian band Artas? The artwork is professional, the record sounds impressive with the helping hand of Jacob Hansen, but I'm still not convinced. First song 'Barbossa' is a heavy pounding motherfucker, with some contagious riffs, but after that the songs become to average and it is as if the band can't find a style of their own.
They make songs with influences of Chimaira, put some clean vocals to some of the songs, sometimes it reminds me of Die Apokalyptiken Reiter, come with a thrasher as 'Rhagenfels' and even copy some Disturbed vocals in the song 'Kontrol'. On top of that they sing in English, German and Spanish! I must say that this is unique, but it doesn't give something extra to the music.
The band is like a ship looking for its direction. Artas has to decide what they want, there are too many styles involved and everything has been done by other bands already and most of the time better. The nice beautiful voice over’s and Coolio's cover 'Gangsta's Paradise' can't save the whole record either.
