A few years ago a lot of hardcore bands worked together and put out a split to let the world know about their existence. Nowadays everybody is downloading, visiting myspace and bands don’t need a label or an other band to arrange some shows or get some attendance of the public. Luckily for me (I’m not a download fan) there are still labels and bands that love releasing their stuff on an album.

Villa Optima Records is one of those (although, I hope that they are going to release more), this is a new record company from the Netherlands and their first release is a split album by Bloodtrial and Rising Tide. Two hardcore band from the Netherlands.
Bloodtrial write in their bio that they are not here to reinvent the wheel, they just want to mosh things up and play hardcore in its purest and heaviest form. And I couldn’t describe their sound better. The band plays the hardcore music good and the sound is very pure like hardcore should sound. Compare it to Terror, Death Before Dishonor and other hardcore bands with no metal in it.

The four songs they put on this record are a nice teaser, you should definitely visit their site to download some other songs after hearing these four songs.

The other band on this split is called Rising Tide and they play hardcore with more a melodic metal sound. Sometimes it has a bit of a Killswitch commercial sound, but never as good as Adam and his mates would do it.
Rising Tide also made four nice songs, but these songs are missing something or the band tries something that doesn`t come of as genuine. After listening it a few times you notice that Rising Tide sounds too pushed, you can’t hear the pleasure they should have. Next to Bloodtrial, this band sounds more metalcore and that’s “not done” for some people in the hardcore scene (for me it’s no problem).

After all, you can say that this is a nice debut release for Villa Optima and that Bloodtrial really surprised me with their songs. Hopefully they will release a full length or another split.