Italian Altjira surprises with its first Ep ”Anent Wist” released last January. The album, which lasts nearly 29 minutes, contains 7 tracks including intro, outro and a cover.

The whispered intro creates atmosphere and get the listener, which doesn’t know what to expect from the next track, curious.

“I Will Not Bend”, the best track in my opinion, has a powerful but still personal sound and with it the listener is able to understund what’s the band is made of.

With its bad ass riff “The Chase” is another good work, interesting is also the epic/heroic theme in the lyrics.
The last track before the outro is a tribute to Iced Earth with the song  “Dracula”, so if you listen to Iced Earth you will enjoy it.

This album is a blast of heavy metal mixed up with thrash and a lot of musical technique, I love the voice because it has a powerful and scratching sound, and lyrics are inspired by narrative, mythology and legends that makes it really interesting.
The artwork, by Federico Musetti, is made in relation to the text of each song but still it doesn’t reveal anything about the music.

This is definitely a good debut, surely they still have to work on, but the base is excellentand and I’m sure we will hear from this band again in the future.