Artas is a Austrian metal band formerly known as Staub & Schatten. Good thing that they changed their name, because a name like Staub & Schatten could easily be an obstacle to find a wider audience. Artas already experienced their first success by winning the Metalchamp 2007 competition. This secured them a spot on the Napalm Records roster, quite the accomplishment!

The biography mentions modern metal as the genre that Artas music can be put in. This is a worthless name for a genre, because what the hell is it? It doesn’t make it any clearer. You can describe Artas' music as a mixture between more modern thrash metal (like Soilwork) and more old fashioned thrash metal (like Kreator).

A nice touch they present on this album is that they sing in three languages, but not every language suits their music very well. I still think that the German language isn’t very suitable for thrash metal, though they are using it a lot better than for example Incubator does. Because of the very staccato sounding German tongue it gives the songs a bit of a hardcore edge and that’s too bad. The songs are clearly written as thrash songs and this doesn’t combine very well with the vocals.

I like the Spanish and English songs, though. They aren’t very original, but the quality is there. I especially like the way ‘Bastardo’ sounds. They give it an almost Sepultura/Soulfly edge and this is something I really like. I also have to mention the cover ‘Gangsta’s Paradise’ which actually works with the thrash style of Artas, something I didn’t expect.

Conclusion: Nice album, with a singer who can easily sing in different languages, though they would do me a favour by deleting all German songs. I don’t have a lot of criticism on the other musicians, though they don’t wow me with their play either. It’s all very decent and because this is their debut, I think there’s enough room for growth, so they can make the step from decent to great.