CoC : Seventh Avenue - Southgate : Review

Seventh Avenue - _Southgate_
(Treasure Hunt Records, 1998)
by: Pedro Azevedo (4 out of 10)

It's not that _Southgate_ is musically bad -- the vocals are reasonably competent and so is most of the instrumental execution. But it brings no innovation whatsoever and its traditional heavy metal songs tend to go by without leaving much behind -- they depend too much upon their choruses, which, in turn, are often too long and poor, drowning some good instrumental passages that the album does have. Plus, I found the album's general atmosphere poor, especially in mellow tracks like "Father", "Heart in Your Hand" and "Goodbye". However, Seventh Avenue's biggest problem may be that all the revivalism that seems to be going on in some areas of Europe lately (mainly in their own home country, Germany) will end up making them face far superior competition within their own genre (not to mention darker and more extreme genres outside the aforementioned revivalism wave). As a result of all this, and despite showing a salvageable instrumental side, Seventh Avenue just don't manage to make the album stand above its own lack of originality.

(article published 1/9/1998)