The new compilation from the Chicago based Sly Productionz titled “Sly Productionz Volume 1” brings a variety of emerging metal bands into focus. This first release from Sly Productionz hosts a wide range of acts, totaling at 17 tracks from 17 different acts. The tone of a lot of this album treads into the Alternative and Heavy Metal waters, but there are also some Thrash Metal and Metalcore tracks as well.

Some of the highlights of this comp are the tracks from Fist To The Sky, Like A Storm, Psychotic Daze, Punch Cabbie, and Emergent. The album opens with a Trash Metal piece from Fist To The Sky the blast away at full tilt the whole track through. Like A Storm takes the second track into Alt Metal territory with accessible lyrics and an impressively technical and industrial tinged breakdown towards the end. Psychotic Daze keep things moving with their riff laden speed metal track “Ride This Bullet Home”. Punch Cabbie brings the Metalcore mayhem to light with their heavy and vocally System of a Down-esque contribution “Revenant”. Wrapping things up are two dirt-rocking, grooving tracks from the bands Hollywood Dirtbags and Hot Dang!, which create a very interesting bookend to the rest of the sound and feel of the compilation.

In all, this is a solid preliminary release from Sly Productionz. It shows a lot of potential for future recordings from the artists included, as well as new artists to come.