Ankor will release I See Red on 20 November through UNFD, with the single ITACHI, blood moon out now. The band formed in Tarragona in 2003, which makes this their twenty third year and, by the look of the catalogue, their seventh album.
Almost nothing about that sentence is typical. UNFD is an Australian label built on the modern heavy scene, and signing a Catalan band two decades into its career is not how that roster usually grows. The line-up explains part of it: Jessie Williams sings and comes from Bristol, Eleni Nota drums and comes from Athens, and the guitars and bass stay in Catalonia with David Romeu, Fito Martinez and Julio Lopez.
The other part is that the band stopped being what it was. Metal Archives files them as heavy and power metal early and alternative metal later, and the records bear that out: a Spanish language debut in 2008, English titles by 2011, and a long run of singles through the last five years in which the heavy parts got leaner and the production got closer to the modern template.
A band that reinvents itself that thoroughly usually loses its audience. Ankor appear to have traded up instead.