KALAPÁCS – Mítosz

Kalapács is a five-piece-band from Hungary who released their sixth album in eight years via Hammer Records a while ago. Why nobody has heard from them internationally is clear when one takes a look at the song titles. Kalapács sing in their native language, Hungarian, which seems to be quite common in their home country as there is a huge number of good Metal bands limiting their worldwide chances of success by avoiding English lyrics. Well, all the better for Metal Express Radio fans, as MER can present you with some hardly known gems from time to time.

That is also the case with Mítosz, the latest Kalapács release. The general style of the band is Heavy Metal with occasional bits of US Metal, Power Metal and some epical parts. It seems the album is a concept album as it contains a spoken intro and a spoken outro and even a spoken part in the song “Verünk Es Verejtekünk”, but the language makes the story hard to understand for the majority. If there is a Hungarian reader who would like to shed some light on the story, please help readers out here so everyone can focus on the most important thing, the music.

And that aspect of the album is absolutely worth attention. First of all, because there is not a single bad song on Mítosz. After the spoken intro, the opening track “A Kard” sets the tone for the remaining 12 tracks: Mostly midtempo, melodic and epical Metal of the traditional kind. If one wants to compare it, early Accept comes to mind like in “A Solymok Feszke” or in “Legendak Könyve” which reminds of the German’s Metal Heart era, and secondly Judas Priest, especially in “A Pusztulas Dala” with its unusually accentuated riff, influenced the band. This combination of unoriginal, but effective traditional Metal parts could be called the common denominator for the Metal scene and should therefore find a lot of friends among the MER listeners and readers.

The typical Kalapács song contains a heavy riff, a memorable chorus, and is medium paced. Of course, during the course of 13 songs it becomes a bit predictable, but since each song is very good in its own right, that only leads to a small reduction of the score. Another reduction has to be done for the production which could use a bit more punch, and the fact that the guitar work can hardly be called virtuosic even if there are some very nice solo parts to be found. But even then, Mítosz remains an above average release that makes one want to listen to their older releases, too. So if you like straight, traditional Metal, Kalapács is a band you don’t want to miss.