From Aural Innovations #34 (August 2006)
My US friend Jim Powell had just arrived on this day so we headed out for some music. The Rock is where one goes for heavy metal. 7 Thorns sounded quite promising in the announcement, "True Power Metal of Eternal Doom", but they did not play Doom at all. They played this sort of melodic power speed metal and almost all the songs sounded exactly the same. Some quite good players but as is usual lately the sound is pretty bad in the ROCK. They need someone to tune their subwoofers under the stage. The bass for all bands just sounds like mud, no definition in the sound, just thump. Anyway, we met up with Michael from Artillery and talked a lot with him when the bands lost our interest. Next up was Eternal Reign from Germany and they played the same style of speed power metal with keyboards, where all the songs sound the same and are fast. I just don't get it???
Finally, we got Gun Barrel from Germany. These guys played more down and dirty old school NWOBHW style music, highly influenced by Saxon. They had quite a few great numbers and really put a lot into their show and rocked for the few that were there. It was a fun night anyway.