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Portugal's Black Flare play a beefy brand of heavy metal on their self-titled debut, combining a thick and thunderous bottom end with Maiden-esque riffs/leads and gravelly shouted vocals. The songs are not bad, somewhat doomy at times, throw a fist in the air at others, but not overly distinctive as traditional heavy metal goes. I don't dislike Black Flare, but I feel like more time went into getting the fat guitar tone than went into the rest of the songs as that tone is about all I can remember once the album is over. This is a solid release, but Black Flare will need to step up their game on the next one if they want to rise above what is a very crowded field of bands that are playing heavy metal these days.