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Austria's Venator and Germany's Angel Blade are a couple of bands mining the early '80s for their metal inspirations and have teamed up on a self-titled split via Dying Victims Productions. Venator has more of a US metal sound with tasty, melodic lead work that had me thinking of Dokken and Icon, whereas the riffing is generally heavier, somewhere between Warlord and Omen. Angel Blade, on the other hand, kind of reminds me of other '80s-inspired bands like Savage Blade or Split Heaven but with a definite NWOBHM streak. Both rock hard and seem like the kind of bands that easily blow away club audiences but don't yet have the material that would enable them to take the next step. They aren't there now, but traditional and old-school metal fans have a couple more bands to keep their eyes on.