Wind Rose - Trollslayer (2024)

Country: Italy
Style: Folk/Power Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 4 Oct 2024
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I had a feeling this would be the case, so I very deliberately avoided reading my review of the prior Wind Rose album, 2022's Warfront, before listening to this new one a bunch of times and taking all my notes. Sure enough, though, most of what I jotted down echoes what I said last time, meaning that this review could mostly be reduced to the single word "Ditto".

Now it's not quite that simple. This isn't as good as its predecessor, but I still enjoyed myself on my first time through and I find that I'm still enjoying myself in much the same way half a dozen more listens in. It's notably shorter, mostly because its songs are shorter. Intro aside, Warfront had only two of nine tracks lasting fewer than five minutes. On Trollslayer, that's five of eight with a further two exceeding that mark by no more than five seconds. The exception is the closer and, while it's a departure from everything else, as indeed Tomorrow Has Come was last time out, the two songs are very different otherwise.

So they're not quite the same album for a few reasons but fundamentally they sound very similar. This band know their sound and they stick to it ruthlessly. The line-up remains unchanged, as it has been since 2018 when drummer Federico Gatti, added as a touring member a year earlier after the departure of Daniele Visconti, joined officially, and their approach is exactly the same. As before, the weakest aspect is that every song works in exactly the same way and sounds very similar. Try a song, any song (OK, maybe not No More Sorrow). If you like that song, you're going to like all the other songs too. If you don't like that first one, nothing else is going to change your mind. Extend that suggestion to cover both albums and it would hold true.

That style is consistent power metal with copious folk elements and a fundamental welcome in its sound. The lead vocals of Francesco Cavalieri are deep and resonant and they constantly invite us to join in. Behind him is Tommaso Corvaja who serves as a choir. Much of the time, while there's a single vocal line, it feels like there's more than one voice and that holds even when there really is only one voice. That adds to the sense that Wind Rose are the jukebox in Valhalla and everyone in the vast room sings along. Of course, chests are ample so microphones are replaced by huge mugs of ale.

It primarily works at two tempos, one of which tends to bulk up to the other. That means that it's a tough call to identify standout tracks because what makes a song our favourite is going to fall to a personal connection to a hook or a melody. Mine are probably The Great Feast Underground and To Be a Dwarf. I happen to like the melody in the former and I also dig the softer midsection where most of the instrumentation falls away for the vocals to continue over what sounds very much like a harpsichord. The hooks on the latter are irresistible and there's also a glorious keyboard riff to kick things off.

I could imagine a lot of people plumping for Rock and Stone, which is a real stomper of a song, an audience participation number in an album full of audience participation numbers. It's catchy and it absolutely knows it, which is why it's one of the few songs to stay at the slower tempo for most of the song. It simply doesn't need to speed up to feel powerful and so we don't move as fast, here in our chairs. Every song here makes us move, even if it's just to sway back and forth as if we're on a bench with a thousand of our brothers in arms singing and swaying in unison.

All that said, there's something to be said for all these tracks. Dance of the Axes maybe increases the tempo just a little bit more to add a sense of speed and urgency. Trollslayer features a lovely instrumental section during its intro. Legacy of the Forge plays up the choral approach even more, with whole sections ditching words and relying entirely on vocalisations. Then there's the closer, No More Sorrow, which changes almost everything.

It's a good song, but being the only one of nine to really attempt something different means that it feels a little out of place. Cavalieri does the same job, as do the various other musicians when it picks up power, but the mood is totally different. There's a second voice that seems pleading and sad, two words that don't apply to anything else on this album. That's especially apparent during the softer section that wraps up the song, a nod back to that harpsichord midsection in The Great Feast Underground. There are hints at harsh voices too, albeit mostly behind clean ones. And, of course, it runs on for seven and a half minutes when nothing else gets its claws past five.

All in all, this is a good old friend of an album, as Warfront was, but it's not quite as successful. On that one, I felt safe with an 8/10 and pondered a 9/10. This is a solid and utterly reliable 7/10.

Pilots of the Daydreams - Invented Paradise (2024)

Country: Switzerland
Style: Progressive Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 20 Sep 2024
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Here's an interesting release from Switzerland that it took me a little while to figure out. It came to me as progressive rock, which isn't unfair. The instrumentality seems to be rooted in prog rock but it often shifts from unusual rhythms and bass lines to a more commercial sound that draws on new wave and goth. The vocals, which are unusually prominent for a singer who's also the band's only guitarist, are often goth too but also dip into prog metal. Songs shift back and forth between these influences, varying the amounts of each until it all starts to feel like a single sound.

The first four tracks alternate between two styles. The title track kicks off like a prog rock band on a Sisters of Mercy kick. There's a drive to the instrumentation but the drums are clearly played by a human being, Biagio Anania, and the sound isn't as reliant on deep groove. It's a sparser sound with the bass reminiscent of Peter Hook's Joy Division years. Marco Predicatori's voice has all the confidence and the presence of Andrew Eldritch and, especially when he deepens it, he even sings similar lyrics. "You're my silent ocean" he sings and makes it sound like three lines.

It's a fascinating voice because it's full of intonation and flourish. He's never just delivering lyrics, he's delivering messages and he's having the sort of fun doing it that lead vocalists aspire to have and guitarists rarely come close to. That he's both in Pilots of the Daydreams means that he's one of those rare creatures who does both well but surely thinks of himself as a vocalist first. I tend to find that the vast majority of people doing both are guitarists who sing not singers who play. Sure, there's a peach of a solo on Perfect Storm that shows he's a very capable guitarist and it isn't the only one, but every single song on the album highlights why he's a magnetic vocalist.

Perfect Storm is similar to Invented Paradise but it turns down the Sisters influence and turns up a prog rock and prog metal side. The rhythms are more unusual. The bassline does more interesting things. The vocals soar more into Queensrÿche territory, Eldritch and Geoff Tate being a surprising pair of influences to mix together, especially if you add some David Bowie to that list. Butterfly in Your Heart returns to the Sisters mindset, but with even more Hook in Walo Bortoletto's bass and a falsetto added to Predicatori's range. Then Euphemia returns to the proggier side once more. It seems like clear alternation.

And then Among Wolves and Sheep changes things up completely, kicking in hard like a classic rock song. In fact it kicks in hard rather like a particular classic rock song because I found myself singing along to Montrose's Space Station #5 every time I repeated it. Bortoletto emphasises Hook style basslines and gets some real moments in the spotlight here to make that clear. He's very audible throughout, partly because the production likes it that way and partly because the guitar takes a back seat surprisingly often. Eventually, the Sisters and Joy Division are trawled in as well, but not at the cost of the classic rock.

And that's the sound of Pilots of the Daydreams, because the first half includes almost everything in various combinations and the second half merely varies it across another five tracks. That may well be one reason why most of my favourites here arrive early, but I dig Sleeping Karma too with even more of a deliberating emoting Geoff Tate in Predicatori's vocals and other moments worthy of a note here. There's more Queensrÿche than just Tate in the opening sequence, there's some Rush in the background and Predicatori even finds some Kate Bush late in the song, which is wild.

There's a track before Sleeping Karma and four more after it, none of which let the side down but none of which seem to enforce their presence on my mind, even after half a dozen times through. I wouldn't call them filler because every one of them is enjoyable, but I also wouldn't call any up to the standard of the first half. I do like the riff in the second half of Set These Dreams on Fire and the jangly build in Close Your Eyes, but I tend to forget them until those song repeats and they're right there again. Hypnotised lives up to its name, I guess, and Everything Has an End must have.

Pilots of the Daydreams are new to me, but I like this album and appreciate its blending of styles I wouldn't have thought would work together. They've been around since 2019 and this is a follow-up to their 2021 debut, Angels are Real, an idea referenced in the lyrics this time out too. I wonder if everything here was birthed there or whether this shows growth.

D-A-D - Speed of Darkness (2024)

Country: Denmark
Style: Hard Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 4 Oct 2024
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I remember D-A-D from way back in the day, starting when they were still called Disneyland After Dark. They put out some excellent albums, though the one I played the most is the one you might expect, their 1989 breakthrough album, No Fuel Left for the Pilgrims. I never forgot where they throw the best damn parties and trawled Rim of Hell out to be played when I joined Chris Franklin in the Raised on Rock studios a couple of years ago. I completely failed to notice that, unlike most bands from the eighties, they never split up and only ever changed line-up once, swapping drummers in 1999. This is their thirteenth studio album.

It starts out how I might expect, with some real Aerosmith swagger on God Prays to Man and 1st, 2nd & 3rd. There's more of that to come, not least on Live by Fire, with a Mama Kin feel to it, and Waiting is the Way, which is angry Aerosmith with some pop punk in the chorus, but there's much more here than just one influence, even if it's an expected one.

I'll skip over The Ghost for now, because it stands alone on this album, both in style and quality, as the song that both impressed me most on a first listen and yet continued to grow with subsequent listens. I'll jump forward to Speed of Darkness instead, which sets a few other influences in play. It kicks off with a grungy riff, like Nirvana covering Black Sabbath, but then shifts into a mellow Red Hot Chili Peppers vibe. Before long, it does both at once, with is interesting to say the very least. There's a gorgeous guitar solo here, from one of the Binzer brothers, probably Jacob, and it isn't the last of those. There's another on I'm Still Here that puts him even more in the spotlight as he plays.

I'm Still Here takes the same mellow Chili Peppers approach and so does Head Over Heels, which adds some of the country that they used to play back in their earliest days. Then again, I recently watched The Charismatic Voice pointing out that Under the Bridge was almost a country song in vocal style, so maybe it came with the territory and muscle memory kicked in. That means that we now have sassy glam-infused hard rock, grungy stoner rock, mellow alt rock and country, all mixed together in ways that sound entirely natural for this band.

Strange Terrain relies on that grungy stoner country vibe. In My Hands does the same thing, with a touch more grunge and distortion for good measure. Jesper Binzer's voice is surely manipulated in post-production for effect. Everything is Gone Now ditches the country and makes the stoner rock more commercial to become a bouncy grunge song. Automatic Survival cuts back on the distortion and plays up that bounce to remind of the glam rock that started out the album. This one became my second highlight because it's more thoughtful than God Prays to Man or 1st, 2nd & 3rd and, like The Ghost, it's a real grower, getting better on every listen.

And, speaking of The Ghost, I'll jump back to that now that you have a strong idea of the flavours that pervade this album. I initially got a new wave vibe out of it, albeit played entirely with rock instrumentation rather than electronica, but it got more alternative as I listened to it again and again. I find the guitarwork especially fascinating, given that it sounds more and more like early U2 covering the Sisters of Mercy. It's a haunting piece that, like Automatic Survival, just keeps on getting better with every listen.

There are other songs here too, because most of them aren't long and they just keep on coming. I actually started to wonder on my first listen, before I took many notes, whether I'd left the album on repeat by accident and I hadn't paid enough attention to remember the tracks that were on a second time through. It turns out that I was only fifty minutes in, partway through the final song, so I'd effectively told myself that it feels like a longer album than it is. In reality, there are merely a lot of songs, fourteen in all, most ranging from just shy of three minutes to not much over four, the one exception being Automatic Survival, which milks its groove until five and change.

It looks like the band are talking up the album as their best in a while and, for once, they might be right and not just spinning their latest record as best they can to the press. I've heard that line on far too many occasions from bands who have completely lost the plot to take it as read. The single reason I can't back them up is that I haven't heard their previous few albums to compare. What I'd be happy to add is that this sounds like the D-A-D I remember but matured by a few decades to be wary of being pigeonholed. They take each of these songs where they feel they should go and, for the most part, I'm not going to argue with their decisions, with a little punk here, a little country there and even a bit of surf for good measure.

Here's where I'd say welcome back, but D-A-D have never been away, so instead I'll say well caught up to myself. I may well have missed some good stuff over the past couple of decades. I hope that you haven't.

Andy Gillion - Exilium (2024)

Country: UK
Style: Symphonic Melodic Death Metal
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 11 Oct 2024
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Andy Gillion is a former lead guitarist for Finnish melodic death metal band Mors Principium Est, with whom he spent a decade, so it shouldn't surprise that this third solo album from him sounds rather like them. Given that he was also their principal songwriter during that time and handled orchestrations on top of his guitar duties, even playing bass on their 2020 album Seven, a record released three months after he was fired, it would be more surprising to find that it didn't sound like them. The more telling question is whether the next original Mors Principium Est album will sound like Mors Principium Est, with only vocalist Ville Viljanen remaining.

To be fair, after checking out Seven, I'd say that this sounds like that but more so. Sure, it remains melodic death metal with a symphonic edge to the songwriting, but it's more epic, more lively and wildly more energetic. Part of that is the furious pace set by Dave Haley, an Australian drummer known for a whole slew of bands, including Psycroptic, but a lot of that is in the guitars too and the urgency of the vocals. Prophecy, the opening track, barrels along nicely, but so does The Haunting and the second half of As the Kingdom Burns absolutely blisters.

I have to call out As the Kingdom Burns as the highlight of the album, partly because of how that second half blisters but also partly because guest vocalist Brittney Slayes of Unleash the Archers is a welcome addition. I don't dislike Gillion's vocals at all, whether he's singing harsh, as he does on most of the songs, or clean, as he does in duet on this track, but Slayes adds an extra power metal level to this music and it works very nicely, especially when she launches that glorious second half with an escalating scream. The album could have done with more of the pitches she hits here.

However, other than a single moment on A New Path where I could swear I heard her again, she's only on that one track and the album shifts firmly back to Gillion's harsh male vocals. Fortunately, he finds an agreeable balance between intelligibility and growl that's also raucous enough to kick the metalcore crowd into action. I like it, even if that moment of Slayes (if indeed that's who that was almost three and a half minutes in) reminds that it could have been more. There's enough of the epic here to suggest that any female vocalist like Slayes or a male vocalist who sings clean and soars in the range of a Bruce Dickinson would emphasise that element better than anyone singing harsh.

But enough of me reviewing what isn't here. Let's get back to what is. Gillion's vocals are good but his guitarwork is excellent. There's an especially strong solo in The Haunting and another on the closer, Acceptance, and there are furious barrages of melody all over the album, including A New Path, Avenging the Fallen and Call to Arms. Sometimes, like on Avenging the Fallen, they're given a repetitious approach that makes our conditioned ears think of them like riffs. It's fair to say that they are, but they're there to be melodies and they work well in that vein, providing the element that a higher pitched clean vocalist would bring to the band.

Matching the epic nature of the music is the symphonic nature of the music. There are no soaring sopranos here, but the songwriting is clearly done with that sort of structure firmly in mind. Most obvious on Avenging the Fallen, which starts out with a keyboard duelling a guitar, drops entirely into a keyboard swell midway and ends with a surprising prog rock-esque drop, the symphonic side is there throughout the album. Sure, we hear it most in the intros, especially when Gillion delivers them on piano like Acceptance, but that keyboard layer is rarely there just to deepen the sound; it tends to adding another layer that wouldn't be there otherwise. If we could listen to Call to Arms without the keyboards, it would be a very different song indeed.

At the end of the day, I like this album a lot. Whatever Mors Principium Est get up to in the future, it's clear that the songwriting approach that defined their sound over the last decade will be live and well in the hands of their principal songwriter, Andy Gillion. That songwriting may be the best aspect of this album, but his guitarwork, especially in conjunction with Dave Haley's drums, is very happy to fight it for that title. His vocals aren't in the same class, but they're still good and, when this reaches its most symphonic, like in the chorus on Call to Arms, they sound even better. Thanks for sending this one over, Andy, and all the best for the future.

Michael Schenker - My Years with UFO (2024)

Country: Germany
Style: Hard Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 20 Sep 2024
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Michael Schenker has been busy over the past decade, with a string of albums from a whole bunch of incarnations of his band, whether it's Michael Schenker's Temple of Rock, Michael Schenker Fest or the good old Michael Schenker Group. Here it's just Michael Schenker, because there are a slew of guest vocalists and musicians to help out revisit his glorious early UFO days fifty years ago with a set of old favourites.

I don't tend to review albums in track order because there are usually better ways to handle them, but I feel like it's needed here because these are such well loved classics that it's going to be easy to get them horribly wrong, meaning that we go into each with both hope and fear and which that track turns out to generate will flavour the next. Fortunately it starts out rather well, even though there was plenty of risk involved.

That's because the first guest vocalist is Dee Snider, a huge talent but not a logical choice to take on a Phil Mogg vocal. However, he does a shockingly good job on Natural Thing, and Joel Hoekstra helps the guitar to feel nice and crunchy. Joey Tempest is much closer to Mogg's style on Only You Can Rock Me, perhaps only Kai Hansen coming closer on Rock Bottom. There's a subtle bass from Deep Purple's Roger Glover, who produced the first MSG album, and Derek Sherinian elevates the second half with his keyboard work. He's one of three musicians here who are present throughout and, while this is always Schenker's show, Sherinian shines throughout. Barry Sparks on bass and Brian Tichy on drums complete the core line-up.

So far, so good, but next up is Doctor Doctor, which is one of the really big ones. I certainly got the tingles when it kicked in and there's glorious guitarwork and lovely keyboards, but I wasn't a huge fan of Carmine Appice's rolling drums, which broke the flow for me more than once, and Joe Lynn Turner, who I'd have expected to have been a highlight going, is the least important aspect of the song, even though he does a good job. I preferred Mother Mary, with Erik Grönwall, lately of Skid Row and soon to be the vocalist on the next original Schenker album. He's decent throughout but excellent on the chorus. Schenker duels with Slash on guitar to take the song home and that's just as good as you're expecting.

This Kid's is a deep cut, the closer from Force It. It's the only song here where I wasn't immediately singing along. Biff Byford is another legend who doesn't remotely sound like Phil Mogg but wisely he doesn't try to and he sounds great against a forceful backdrop. Unsurprisingly it's a merger of UFO and Saxon but that's fine and the instrumental section with Schenker and Sherinian, taking a lead role, is joyous. That's five tracks and it's been impressive thus far. Schenker sounds excellent, of course, and the guest choices, even where they don't seem to make sense, mostly work.

So to Love to Love, the song I dreaded most here for a couple of reasons. It's one of the most iconic hard rock songs ever recorded, Steve Harris of Iron Maiden calling it the very best of them, and it's not one that should be messed with. That said, the guest vocalist here is Axl Rose and that hardly inspired confidence. I tried to maintain an open mind, because he worked in AC/DC far better than I expected and he does better here than I thought he would too, but not enough. This is Schenker's song with credit to Sherinian again and once more the ending is fantastic. My wife rang during the closing solo and I didn't answer. Some things should be kept sacred.

Talking of sacred, next up is Lights Out with one of the greatest guitar solos ever recorded, so far up the list that it was playing in my head while I was listening to Schenker and John Norum miss it here. Jeff Scott Soto brings the voice and he's too forceful. It's a decent cover but it emphatically isn't the original and I felt that far more on this track than any other. Fortunately it's followed by Rock Bottom, which is eleven minutes long, as it tended to be live, and that has to mean oodles of guitar. Kai Hansen impresses on vocals that are a slightly metallic Mogg, and also has a lot of fun with Schenker on guitar during those extended solos.

Turner and Appice return on Too Hot to Handle, the only guests to appear on more than one track, and they're joined by Adrian Vandenberg. Sadly, what I noted about them both on Doctor Doctor also applies here. Fortunately Let It Roll really rolls; in fact, it gallops. Michael Voss does a strong job with the vocals. Of all people, Stephen Pearcy doesn't do a bad job on Shoot Shoot either, even though he's another strange choice to tackle a Mogg vocal. I can't say it works for me the way that Schenker's guitar does but it's an interesting approach and the grit in his voice oddly works.

And so there are a lot of surprises here. Dee Snider and Biff Byford work wonderfully, even if they shouldn't, while Joe Lynn Turner oddly doesn't, even though he should. Axl Rose is easily the least successful guest but his bandmate Slash is one of my highlights, along with Kai Hansen, who really shocked me with his contribution, not because he's good, because I already knew that, but by how well he fit on a UFO covers album. Lights Out was the least successful cover for me, while Only You Can Rock Me may be the best and This Kid's was the most effectively different. Inherently, though, your mileage may vary.

Alkonost - Дар Саламандры (2024)

Country: Russia
Style: Folk Metal
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 30 Aug 2024
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Alkonost are another of those bands who have been around for a long time without me noticing. They formed in Nabarezhnye Chelny in the Republic of Tatarstan in 1996 and have knocked out at least twelve albums, most of them in Russian but with a couple seeing additional release in the English language. This isn't one of them, but it comes a year after an Anniversary Edition of their debut, a previously cassette-only English language album, Songs of the Eternal Oak. The core of the band is founding member Andrey Losev, who writes the songs and plays guitar and keyboards.

What I'm hearing is that all those roles are fundamental here, making him the heart and soul of what this band does. The guitar is a heavy crunch that sets the fundamental tone for everything. It's a rhythmic guitar that's more interested in echoing a beat than delivering a riff and there are few guitar solos to be found. The melodies here are primarily the province of the vocals, which are provided by Ksenia Pobuzhanskaya, but the keyboards often emphasise her when she sings and in moments when she doesn't, they often take over from her.

If I'm reading things correctly, Pobuzhanskaya is the only other actual member of Alkonost, with an array of guests fleshing out the line-up for this album, even though some of them have credits on earlier releases. Vadim Grozov plays the bass throughout, but other duties are split up by song. I see three drummers, with Dmitry Bortsov possibly the most frequent presence, appearing on five of the nine tracks. There are two guest guitarists but only on a couple of tracks, both showing up on Северное сияние, or Northern Lights, and Pavel Kosolapov playing on Оберег, or Amulet, too. That leaves Andrey Tepper as the violinist on Оберег.

I liked this album pretty quickly, even though it plays out in a highly consistent manner, so it's hard to pick out favourite songs. If you like one, you're going to like all of them, but if you don't like the one you started with, nothing else is going to change your mind. Maybe Оберег is notably playful for a couple of minutes, that violin joining keyboards and vocals before the crunch joins in. Maybe the second half of Разожги огонь, or Light the Fire, elevates it through a strong hook, some free flying ethnic-sounding vocals from Pobuzhanskaya and some technical guitar changes. And maybe Солнце, or Sun, has an even better hook. Quite frankly, though, I could easily call out some aspect of every song to say something special about it, without it having any more meaning.

What that boils down to is that this plays best not as nine songs, but as a single forty plus minute slab of folk metal. It's a very easy album to listen to and I've listened to it for the past three weeks as I've been distracted away from music reviews by a hundred other urgent tasks until I finally got it down on virtual paper. However, it's felt just as good every time I've come back to it partly due to having a welcoming warmth to it. In fact, that welcome may be one reason why it reminded me of a song from a short film I've screened at events that's both gothic and steampunk, both highly welcoming communities.

Coincidentally, that film is also Russian, titled Corset and written and directed by Olga Twighlight in 2015, but the song, Set Me Free, is from a German electro-industrial band, In Strict Confidence. Listening to that afresh, the guitar crunch seems very similar to what I'm hearing from Alkonost and their use of keyboards isn't wildly different either, so it's hardly surprising to realise that I'd heard this as both gothic and steampunk, even though it's not really either. What's different are the vocals, because Pobuzhanskaya is emphatically rooted in folk music while In Strict Confidence remain stubbornly gothic.

And that means that, while Losev is the bedrock of this band, it's Pobuzhanskaya who becomes the one who gives it its identity. She only ever sings clean and in a folky voice that ranges from playful soprano down to sultry contralto. The latter is her default voice, but Оберег especially highlights both sides of her range, reminding me of a versatile Russian pop singer called Линда, or Linda, a singer who also dipped into both folk music and goth. I'd love to hear Alkonost cover anything off Ворона, especially the title track.

Clearly I should be listening to more Alkonost. On another day, I might have given this a solid 7/10 because it's a consistently enjoyable album. Today, I'm going with an highly recommended 8/10 as it's become quite the companion over a few weeks and it still feels just as good now as it did on my first time through. A lot of otherwise wonderful albums age quickly but this one feels just as fresh as it always did. I wonder if I'll find the same with their earlier material. I may need to find out. The title translates to The Gift of the Salamander, so, hey, thank you, salamander!

God Dethroned - The Judas Paradox (2024)

Country: The Netherlands
Style: Black/Death Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 6 Sep 2024
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I didn't dislike God Dethroned's eleventh album, 2020's Illuminati, but it didn't have many edges to it. I called it "extreme metal that you can take home for tea with your mother". This twelfth starts out in the same vein, The Judas Paradox slow and patient with easily intelligible lyrics and nothing particularly extreme, but Rat Kingdom ramps up the tempo and adds some of those edges. I really like its stop and start mindset that gives it some serious punch and the blackened flavour that has been missing so often lately is very much there. It's still my favourite song on the album, but there are some other surprises in store that elevate it a little over its predecessor.

My biggest problem with The Judas Paradox is how slow most of it is. There's no requirement for a death metal album to be fast; just go back and listen to some of the groundbreaking albums from back in the day; there's a lot of ground in between, say, the debut Autopsy and the debut Cannibal Corpse. There's no requirement for a black metal album to be fast either, given how many genres it's cohabiting with nowadays. However, we do tend to expect black/death to be fast and this often isn't, starting with that very patient opener.

Rat Kingdom changes that, bringing in blastbeats, barrelling riffs and frantic melodies. There are points where it doesn't feel particularly extreme, but plenty where it does. The Hanged Man sits somewhere in between the two, returning us to lyrics about Judas but with fast drums behind the slower, melodic riffing. Black Heart is more elegant, ditching the edges but keeping the drums, in a song that starts out as full doom with chiming bells and atmosphere. And so it goes, songs often heavy metal as much as anything more extreme, however harsh those intelligible vocals happen to be, but speeding up again every time we notice.

It's fair to say that I wanted a lot more of this album to be fast and, when it was fast, to be faster. I ended up listening far more than I expected to, because of a crazy week, and I found that I became very comfortable with it. And that's a real double edged sword when it comes to extreme metal, a return to that "extreme metal that you can take home for tea with your mother" quandary. From one side, comfortable means that they're doing something that's easy to get to know and become friends with. I made friends with this album after a couple of times through.

However, comfortable also means that it's inherently not that extreme. Every time I get to Hubris Anorexia seven tracks in, which blisters right out of the gate, I feel shocked, as if a nun just farted. Broken Bloodlines opens in a similar way three tracks later, with a real punch, even if that becomes quickly defused by what's layered over it. Even when it gets extreme for a moment, that moment passes soon enough, whether replaced or defused.

Getting to know an album like an old friend, though, means that the details pop. The Hanged Man elevates because of the guitar solo in the middle. Kashmir Princess elevates because of the section deep into its second half that drifts unexpectedly into psychedelic rock. I wasn't expecting that just as I wasn't expecting the drop to mellow midway through Hubris Anorexia. Hailing Death elevates because of how catchy it is, even though the riffs and hooks aren't particular complex. There are a few subtleties in apparent down moments too that are more complex and just as enjoyable.

And so God Dethroned seem determined to make their hybrid of black and death metal just about as accessible as they can get without losing the tag of extreme metal. Like its predecessor, it's the epitome of unoffensive, a cute puppy of an extreme metal album that may end up serving best as a gateway into extremity. There are eleven tracks here, some of which aren't extreme at all and a few of which go there at points. However, the vocals are always intelligible, even though they stay harsh throughout, and every aspect of the music is fundamentally built on melody.

Maybe you can test this out on an unwary nibling who's open for a new musical experience. If they turn out to be good with The Judas Paradox, try Hailing Death on them. If they're good with that too, then move up to Broken Bloodlines. If they're good with all eleven, up to and including Hubris Anorexia, then they're ready to move up a grade and you have a real exploration to plan.

Eyes - Auto-Magic (2024)

Country: Sweden
Style: Melodic/Hard Rock
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 6 Sep 2024
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Official Website

This came to me labelled as melodic rock but Soldier of Love opens up the album as clear hard rock with thoughts about crossing that border into heavy metal. Its has a confident barrelling pace and it continues to shift wonderfully throughout its five minutes. Mysterious Ways is slower, moving to melodic rock, but the drums still have quite the punch to them; they're not fast but they're high in the mix. Until the End of Time has some glam to its opening, before it moves back to melodic rock and that's most of the variety we're going to find on this album. Or so I thought after one listen.

I should add that five minutes seems to be an important threshold for Eyes. Almost everything on this album runs between five and five and a half minutes, except Innocent Dreamer that runs ten seconds longer and Don't Stop the Night that's done in only four minutes and change. That's long for melodic rock, where songs tend to be those three golden minutes that radio stations would be happy to play before moving onto something else. These songs are all driven by melody and beat, most obviously through Peter Andersson's voice, but they stretch notably past that sweet spot for radio.

Soldier of Love is my highlight, but it's also the only overt hard rock song here in a sea of melodic rock with a prominent beat. The only other song that shifts like this one is What Money Can't Buy, with a nice slide riff. It's not as heavy, but it's growing on me fast. The guitars, courtesy of Joakim Sandberg, remind of a Deep Purple tone, possibly in part because the keyboards back it so closely. There's some Tank here at points too, though never quite that heavy. Like the opener, this would have played very well on the Friday Rock Show back in the mid-eighties.

I'm not sure who else is in the band, nowadays, because I can't find that information, but on their debut album in 2021, Perfect Vision 20/20, Andersson was the only member who wasn't formerly in Aces High. At least I think so. I'm seeing so many different details that often shuffle names around that I'm not sure who's who any more. Maybe this is Aces High, merely renamed to Eyes for some reason, like maybe they got mistaken for an Iron Maiden tribute band too often. If so, then Aces High released three albums that I'm aware of, going back to the nineties. Eyes have added two to that count.

Whoever's in the band and whatever its history, this album is capable stuff. Soldier of Love caught my attention immediately but nothing else followed suit, so I wondered if I should move on to find a different album to review. I stuck with it, though, and What Money Can't Buy enforced itself on a second listen. Then other songs started to make their presence known too and, the longer I listen, the more I like this album. Sure, I'd have liked it more if more songs had matched those two in use of power, but they're all growers and that's not a bad thing. The title track built next with its sassy riff and then the laid back Sailing Ships Across the Ocean with its tasty guitar solo. And so on.

Maybe one reason why it wasn't more immediate for me is because so much of it is fundamentally simple. Innocent Dreamer has a simple but effective riff. Any Way You Dream has an even simpler riff that's arguably even more effective. On a first listen, there was nothing I hadn't heard before. On a second or a third, they got under my skin because they're just performed so well. There's not a flash moment in their bones. Nobody's showing off. Nobody's stealing the spotlight, even in the guitar solos. That tends to mean that few moments leap out for special attention. I didn't end up with a lot of written notes after a first time through.

What gradually manifests is the realisation that these guys know precisely what they're doing and what they're doing is exactly what they need to be doing at any particular moment in time. All this eventually reminded me of comic book artists, like Will Eisner, who started out as cartoonists. They don't draw a lot of lines, which tends to makes their work seem simplistic, but they're experienced enough and skilled enough to draw exactly the right line in exactly the right place, so the resulting effect is huge. In music, Bad Company would be the epitome of that. All Bad Company have on this band is the fact that I know a lot of their stuff by heart. Eyes are still new on me.

And so I found myself listening again and again and again, each time playing better than the last. After a first listen, I was thinking about a 6/10. After a second, I realised that I should up that to a 7/10. After a third, there was no doubt. After half a dozen times through, I'm singing along with a song like Through the Night that hadn't grabbed me before and so I'm wondering about whether an 8/10 would be warranted. It's not all melodic rock now. It's neat tone in Auto-Magic. It's bounce in Through the Night. It's laid back elegance in Sailing Ships Across the Ocean. It's apparently the gift that keeps on giving. So, yeah, an 8/10 and a magnetic one because I don't want to move on.