Album Review: Diamond Chazer - Chasing Diamonds
Reviewed by Paul Hutchings
The moment every reviewer’s heart sinks arrived about 30 seconds into this record. The vocalist opened his mouth, the dog, who had been happily sleeping, got up and walked out the room and the wife walked past and asked if I needed a doctor. I hate to be critical, but this record is a stinker.
Let’s give the history. Diamond Chazer are a metal band from Medellín in Colombia. Formed in 2017, they comprise vocalist and keyboardist Stiven Giraldo, Ramiro Álvarez and Juan Fernando Figueroa on guitars, José Manuel Cárdenas on drums and Jhon Denis Rojas on bass. Their first EP ‘Chained in Tokyo’ was initially released on cassette limited to 100 copies under the Repulsion Records label (Bogotá). Amazingly they have plans to release it on CD and vinyl soon.
Musically the band are reasonable, competently playing an unimaginative NWOBHM speed metal style, but with keyboards, which adds a really 1980s feel, and not always in a good way. There are shredding guitar solos, flicks and tricks a plenty. Think prototype Maiden, Tygers etc. The production fails to help, rougher than me on a Friday morning at Bloodstock, giving the album a tinny, echoing feel. Rudimentary lyrics deal with subjects covered a thousand times before, love and freedom, horror, sword & sorcery. Song titles include ‘Zero to Hero’, ‘The whip’, and ‘Poltergeist’, along with a horrible cover of Gotham City’s ‘Swords & Chains’.
There are multiple problems. The songs aren’t particularly good, the sound is dated and the off-tone delivery of Giraldo is excruciating at times. He can hit the high pitches, although the shrieks he emits are rarely in the right place, such as on the opener ‘Zero to Hero’, where he’s just all over the place. Things take a turn into utter mediocrity with ‘Tokyo Rendezvous’, which has no redeeming features. The song is clunky, generic and the singing shockingly bad. Just in case it was a blip, I pushed on to ‘Breakin’ The Chains’ but although the music remained average but listenable, there was little redemption from the vocals, with his double tracking on the choruses Utlising his high pitched tones to quite irritating effect. Imagine King Diamond, with his foot in a bear trap whilst he tries to call for help.
I tried ‘I Need You’. It didn’t help and the next track, ‘Freedom’, proved to be the nail in the coffin. One of the worst songs I have ever heard, there was nothing about this that I enjoyed. The attempt at a power ballad failing abysmally, and the singing worse than I thought possible.
I hate to write negative reviews but, on this occasion, everything about Diamond Chazer was a struggle. It may be that Colombia is stuck in a time warp, but if the band are determined to go down the 1980s feel, they really need to up their game. Bands of that time, such as Tokyo Blade, Raven and Elixir are still making great music with much more style and quality. With so much brilliant music to listen to, anything that is even average isn’t going to get anywhere. I’m afraid this band are in the also-ran pile.
