Apocalypse Later Music Reviews: UK

Showing posts with label UK. Show all posts

Thursday, 27 February 2025

Airforce - Acts of Madness (2025)

Country: UK
Style: Heavy Metal
Rating: 6/10
Release Date: 21 Feb 2025
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | Official Website | YouTube

Given that the drummer in Airforce is Doug Sampson, formerly of Iron Maiden, who provided the beat on The Soundhouse Tapes, it probably shouldn't surprise that there's a heck of a lot of Iron Maiden to be found in Airforce, right from the outset in Among the Shadows. However, it's most obvious in the air raid siren vocals of Portuguese singer Flávio Lino rather than the music behind him, which is just as often reminiscent of Judas Priest. The only time Lino doesn't sing like Bruce Dickinson is in mellower sections, like in Lost Forever, when he shifts more towards a Geoff Tate style. However, the instrumentation alternates, stalking like Priest but galloping like Maiden.

Frankly, the derivative sound is the most obvious drawback, because a lot of people will only hear Maiden (and Priest) and dismiss the band because of that. They may miss the fact that they were around back then, even though they didn't release an album until 2016. Airforce were formed in 1987, at least under that name, but their roots go back to 1979 with the band EL-34, the original home of lead guitarist Chop Pitman and bassist Tony Hatton, who formed Airforce with Sampson and his brother Sam on vocals after the split of EL-34 . When Sampson left in 1999, it was EL-34's Mick Dietz who took over until Airforce split in 2001. So they were forged out of the same steel.

Given how inexorably the album moves towards Iron Maiden, not least through the inclusion of a cover, Strange World, to wrap things up, it actually starts out more akin to Priest. They're easily the most obvious sound in the opener, Among the Shadows, though Lino's vocals are taken right from the Dickinson playbook. Life Turns to Dust is even more Priest, slower but harder with real emphasis. It's a stalker of a song and, even with those Dickinson vocals, the structure feels more like what Rob Halford might sing.

There's Priest in The Fury too, but it's when the Maiden starts to take over, not least through its bouncy riff which seems achingly familiar. I can't quite tell if they lifted it from an actual Maiden song or it's so close to that style that it feels like that. It's close to Transylvania, that's for sure, but it's not quite the same. Perhaps because it tries to merge those Priest and Maiden styles, it comes across like it's not quite fully formed. However, it's the only song I'd say that about, as the longer the album runs the more comfortable it feels in the Maiden sound.

Cursed Moon is more Maiden. Sniper is very much Maiden, built from a slow gallop. And, after a brief interlude with the partly mellow Lost Forever and those notes of Queensrÿche, the second half dives right into Maiden with a vengeance. Heroes and Obliterated especially flow together and, while they may be highly derivative, it's effortlessly derivative enough that it's easy to fall right into it. It's telling that Obliterated feels as much Maiden as Heroes, even though there are no vocals to emphasise the connection. It's a very tasty instrumental.

And with acknowledgement to presumably cinematic fare in Westworld and Hacksaw Ridge, two decent but lesser songs here, I should jump forward to that cover. Sampson never played on a lot of Maiden tracks, at least in the studio, only the originals of Iron Maiden, Invasion and Prowler, on The Soundhouse Tapes, and Burning Ambition, the B-side of Running Free, so it would always be interesting to hear him on another track. Oddly, it's feels like a slower cover, even though it's also done with quicker. The original lasts five and a half minutes, but this is wrapped by the five minute mark.

Unsurprisingly, this is going to be best recommended to fans of early Maiden, but there's value here beyond what sounds somewhat like a cover band performing largely original songs. I got a real kick out of the power in Life Turns to Dust, thoroughly enjoyed the instrumental Obliterated and relished in the galloping stalk of Sniper. Lost Forever is Airforce's attempt to do something a little more original and it's fair to say that it works, alternating between mellow and powerful, a real journey of a song.

What matters is that they're creating new music. Having not released anything during their first fourteen year incarnation from 1987 to 2001, not even getting a demo onto the Friday Rock Show via The Rock War, they got down to business late into their second. They reformed in 2008, Pitman leading the way and Sampson following two years later. Hatton rejoined in 2016 and that's when they finally released their debut album, Judgement Day. Strike Hard followed four years later in the COVID times, with a live album a year later, and this arrives four years after that. I'd be very happy to hear more from Airforce, even if they can't escape Iron Maiden's shadow but especially if they can.

Tuesday, 18 February 2025

Saor - Amidst the Ruins (2025)

This is the third Saor album that I've reviewed at Apocalypse Later, of the six that Andy Marshall has released thus far, and it's another subtle progression forward. It plays in a similar folk/black metal hybrid to Forgotten Paths and Origins, but continues the heavier approach of the latter. It also plays very well over almost an hour, with four tracks over ten minutes each and the short one still over eight, each of them benefitting from all that breathing space. What's new is a solid use of strings, a trio of violin, viola and cello on three tracks and another cello on a fourth.

Amidst the Ruins starts the album out as black metal. It's very melodic, especially once deliberate melodies are laid over the top, often using whistles or pipes, but still with that wall of sound and a vocal that's harsh but not unwelcoming. Gradually, though, folk elements make themselves more and more obvious, until a flute solo midway shifts all the way into cinematic soundtrack territory. That's only emphasised by the strings during the second half, this being the first of the three with violin, viola and cello, and the three fit together stylistically without being identical.

They continue into Echoes of the Ancient Land, which gets to its flute solo a lot sooner but works in much the same way. What it adds to the mix is a clean voice for Marshall which works well indeed, especially backed by that of Ella Zlotos, whose guest presence as both clean female vocalist and a variety of whistles and pipes, is very noticeable and welcome. It does ramp up to the black metal tempo at points, but it's mostly slower and more moody. And, for a while, Rebirth, closing out the album, is more of the same, following a similar approach to Amidst the Ruins.

However, it shifts more and more from black to folk and in a way that's not typical for Saor. These folk elements are all over the band's sound, so closely entwined with the black metal that it isn't removable. It's not a layer, it's a crucial half of their essence. However, I tend to hear it as setting, whether it feels cinematic or not. These folk elements put me into a place, like I'm outside in the bleak wild spaces of Scotland and the music is happening around me, but I'm only imagining that place rather than anything happening within it. It's a belonging feel.

The more Rebirth grows, the more it turns into a different sort of folk music, the sort that makes us want to move and dance. I don't feel alone in the elements any more because there's a piper leading me somewhere. This is hinted at from a couple of minutes in but it escalates at the eight and a half minute mark. My least favourite part to this song is a very prominent drum that grabs my attention away from the rest of the music every time through but maybe that's deliberate, to steal our focus and pass it on to that piper.

That leaves two other songs that sit in between Echoes of the Ancient Land and Rebirth and they are even more interesting in different ways.

Glen of Sorrow is the one that really works for me. The earlier songs are strong but this one stood out for me on a first listen and it's only elevated on repeats. Rather than launch in hard with black metal, it takes its time, starting out with slow, majestically echoing chords then adding an electric guitar. When it ramps up, there's a tasty layering of harsh and clean vocals. Midway, Zlotos starts to chant gloriously and it complements the music behind her. This is a different take on Saor, kind of like Dead Can Dance as folk/black metal, and it renders the sound a sticky one that won't leave my brain. It was still playing in my head during the next track.

And that's The Sylvan Embrace, which works too but I'm not as fond of it. It's a much calmer piece but with some ominous texture behind it. It's slower, largely acoustic and the vocals are generally delivered in whispers, as if recounting an ancient secret. Ironically, the strings are more obvious here where they're the work of Jo Quail's solo cello than on the near forty minutes of tracks that feature the trio of violin, viola and cello. It's an integral component that's impossible to ignore. It's a good track, but it's inherently a step or three down in intensity from everything else.

I almost went with a 7/10 again, even though this is surely my favourite of the three albums, but I eventually bumped it up to an 8/10. Saor are a better band than 7/10 suggests, even though that's still a solid rating in my system, enjoyable albums I have no hesitation in recommending. I merely can't seem to persuade myself to round up instead of down. Here, I think I need to round up. This has been on repeat for a couple of days now and I'm still enjoying it as much as ever, with three of five tracks marked down as highlights. I'm still waiting for that 9/10 album though. It's surely only a matter of time.

Friday, 17 January 2025

Tokyo Blade - Time is the Fire (2025)

Tokyo Blade really aren't hanging about in the 21st century. This is the fourth album of theirs I've reviewed here at Apocalypse Later since 2018, which means that they're knocking them out pretty quickly. It's also fair to mention that none of them are short albums, Fury three years ago almost eighty minutes long and this not too far behind it. They're writing a lot of material, which is great, but it's telling that I gave Unbroken and Dark Revolution, two albums that run just shy of an hour each, 8/10s, but Fury and Time is the Fire, 7/10s. Had they been cropped more judiciously, maybe I might have stayed at an 8/10.

Then again, maybe I wouldn't. For an album with fourteen full tracks, there are precious few that I'd call standouts. Feeding the Rat is a decent opener with a good Tank-style chug, but it can't find the hooks I'd expect. Moth to the Fire is decent too, but nothing more. Are You Happy Now is only there, enough that I never seem to acknowledge it. However many times I listen through, Man on the Stair grabs me with its slower pace and more successful groove—it does run long though, just like the album, and it loses me by the end—and then The Enemy Within grabs me afresh, as if Are You Happy Now just isn't there in between them. It's like my brain refuses to let it register, even with tasty guitars in the second half.

The Enemy Within is the first of four highlights for me, but it's a surprising one. It has an epic feel to it, even though it's only four and a half minutes long, doing some of what Man of the Stair did a couple of tracks earlier but more successfully. I adore the delightfully elegant guitarwork, but it's more like a Queensrÿche song, especially in the verses, than a Tokyo Blade song. Is that bad? Well, yes and no, because it sets something of a trend. There's more elegant guitar on The 47, with Alan Marsh going for a Phil Lynott approach during the verses and the band behind him ending up in a sort of Canterbury-era Diamond Head vibe. As an old school Tokyo Blade fan, I've often compared other bands to them. It seems weird doing it the other way round so overtly.

The second highlight for me is The Devil in You, which takes this elegant technical eighties metal approach and bulks it up with a more modern backdrop. It's a heavy NWOBHM song with a strong Randy Rhoads-era Ozzy riff to anchor us in that timeframe, but there are Pantera moments there too. For something so rooted in the early eighties, it's also the most modern song anywhere to be found on this album. In fact, I'd struggle to find another example of a modern touch. There's some glam metal here, in songs like Written in Blood, that feel late eighties, like the Queensrÿche nods, but little newer.

The other two highlights delve into 19th century English poetry, so naturally end up with at least a hint of Iron Maiden in them. However, only one of them really follows a Maiden approach, which is The Six Hundred, a take on The Charge of the Light Brigade. Marsh sings lyrics borrowed from and subtly changed from Tennyson's poem and there's also a narrative section in the second half, just in case we hadn't noticed the Maiden influence. However, it's not the literary source that elevates it; it's the riffs and the hooks, those old fashioned touches that tend to make songs memorable.

Tennyson's poem came out in 1854 but Ramesses, the closer, delves back to 1818 to quote Shelley's Ozymandias during its intro. This may be the best song on the album but it's also one of the most derivative, building just like a Dio-era Rainbow song, right down to the middle eastern tinges, but with a firm eighties metal edge. It's always metal rather than rock, even with a progression taken from George Harrison's While My Guitar Gently Weeps. Again, the riffs work and the hooks work and there's some lovely dual guitarwork. I always want more of that on a Tokyo Blade album and the best examples are on Ramesses, just like it contains the best chugs and the best hooks.

There are other songs here, quite a few of them, but, as enjoyable as they are, few of them find a way of sticking in the brain like those highlights. I do like that Lynott vocal approach on The 47 and Soldier On, both opportunities for Marsh to really emphasise the stories he's telling with serious intonation. There are solid chugs on Feeding the Rat and We Burn. There's a nice heavy section on Going with the Flow, which otherwise plays in the Queensrÿche ballpark, perhaps appropriately as the song following The Enemy Within. It's not good, though, when my brain condenses a seventy-five minute album down to a quartet of standouts, especially when it does it during the album.

Bottom line, this is a good album but it's also much too long. Some of these songs surely should be B-sides of singles or songs that emerge on a bonus disc somewhere. There's too much here for it to not affect the overall rating. In fact, I may be a little generous in going with a 7/10 but I think I will stay happy with that. Nothing's bad. It's just that there isn't as much that's great as I was hoping.

Thursday, 9 January 2025

Ian Hunter - Defiance Part 2: Fiction (2024)

You'd never know from this album that Ian Hunter is eighty-five frickin' years old, especially with a song as absolutely killer as People to open up. Damn, that's a catchy "na na" chant to kick off a new album, as if we're back in 1974 and Mott the Hoople is still in business. Hunter certainly is, spitting out cynical lyrics with glorious intonation that land tellingly. I found myself singing along with this song on my very first time through and all the more on further listens. It's about everyone being a consumer of marketing. "We know what people want," claim the marketroids. "No you don't!" we chant in response. This is a fantastic song to start but it's also easily the standout track.

Much of the rest of the album follows the precedent of the title track, which is a singer-songwriter song in the old style. It feels notably weaker than People initially, but it grows as it goes, getting under the skin before it's done. Arguably the quality of the songs will depend on this factor. Those that get under our skin are the strong ones that will grow with repeats until we wonder why we'd doubted them to begin with. Those that don't will feel weaker and lessen the album overall. What seems particularly important is that that's going to be a personal thing. I can absolutely imagine that the songs that don't get under my skin may well get under yours.

Hunter's voice is as recognisable as ever and, while his voice may be a little rougher now than the rough it's always been, it's still glorious and his delivery is just as fantastic as it's ever been. He's feeling these lyrics and passing that feeling on to us without any trouble at all. What's more, few songs are worthy of comparisons because they generally feel like Ian Hunter songs. He sounds like Bob Dylan on a lot of What Would I Do without You, a song on which Lucinda Williams joins in and her voice has changed considerably since I last heard it. Otherwise, the delivery on This Ain't Rock and Roll sounds like a Steve Earle story song, but that's about it. Everything else is Hunter.

I can't get much further in this review without pointing out that this is the sequel to Defiance Part 1, which came out in 2023 and which I haven't heard. Like that album, this one features a core set of musicians but also a heck of a lot of guests. I wasn't remotely surprised to find that Joe Elliott is there on backing vocals, as he's worshipped Hunter for decades, but he's not particularly obvious. He's on People, along with both Robin Zander and Rick Nielsen of Cheap Trick. Brian May heavies up Precious, Jeff Beck and Johnny Depp both contribute guitars to The 3rd Rail and the late Taylor Hawkins plays drums on four tracks, including Hope, with Williams and Billy Bob Thornton helping out with the vocals.

I appreciated many of these contributions, but none are blatant, Williams's voice on What Would I Do without You being easily the most obvious. Whatever these luminaries contribute, Hunter's voice and lyrics remain in the spotlight. Of course we're supposed to listen to the lyrics on singer-songwriter songs but that doesn't mean that we always do. We do here, even if we don't know what Hunter's singing about. The 3rd Rail, for instance, is a notably sad song that I have to assume refers to a news story back home that I must have missed, having hopped the pond a couple of decades ago.

The most obviously Ian Hunter songs are People, with its Mott the Hoople glam rock drive, along with This Ain't Rock and Roll and Everybody's Crazy But Me, with its simple but very effective riff in the time honoured Keith Richards style. The former seems pretty straight forward, dissing on modern music, but I wonder if it actually is. After all, disses on modern music aren't remotely new and I wonder if Hunter is cleverly nodding to the fact that, a century ago, someone was probably complaining about how the work songs mentioned in the first verse simply aren't like they were back in the old country. The latter is neatly sardonic, as we expect from Hunter.

Amidst all the singer-songwriter material, Precious and Kettle of Fish are heavier songs, courtesy of Brian May on the former and Rick Nielson returning on the latter. I like the variety of intensity and it feels like Hunter does too. He relishes telling stories in songs like The 3rd Rail and Hope but he really gets his teeth into hooks on songs like People and Precious. When he starts Everybody's Crazy But Me with a characterful "'allo, 'allo, 'allo", we struggle to believe it's over half a century since Mott the Hoople split. Talking of openings, People begins with "It's the gospel according to whichever channel you're listening to", which is almost as great a beginning as the "na na" chant before it.

What that means is that some of this is immediate, most obviously People, but none of it is tough to get through. With repeat listens, everything grows and some of it considerably. There's a lot in play here and it's well worth trying to figure out what Hunter's singing about, even on songs that outwardly seem straightforward like This Ain't Rock and Roll. And that in turn means that I really need to take a listen to Defiance Part 1. I grabbed a copy in 2013 but never got to it. Obviously that was a mistake.

Thursday, 2 January 2025

David Gilmour - Luck and Strange (2024)

The second half of 2024 was a nightmare for me trying to get anything done, so I missed out on the fifth studio album from Pink Floyd main man Dave Gilmour in September, his first in the nine years since Rattle That Lock in 2015. However, I did hear a couple of tracks from it. Between Two Points, a song featuring his daughter Romany on harp and lead vocals, got good press and I listened online, then Alice Cooper played it and another track I don't recall on his radio show. I remember thinking that it sounded interesting but lost a lot of its impact through a car radio, so wanted to seek it out at home and never got the chance until now.

I've heard a lot of praise for this album but I find it a little inconsistent. The good side is wonderful but some of the other songs are predictable or, worse, just there. I've only listened through three times so maybe some of it will grow on me with future listens, but I've found that threshold to be a pretty safe one on the whole.

Black Cat is just there, opening up the album, but it's only a brief reminder of the Gilmour guitar tone to set things in motion. Luck and Strange is much better but it sounds exactly like the sort of song we'd expect on a David Gilmour solo album. He plays that fluid guitar with all the sparsity he is renowned for, delivering only the few notes that he feels the track needs but every one of them perfect in every way. He also sings in a voice that's almost as recognisable nowadays as his guitar tone. Given that the piano and organ come courtesy of Pink Floyd's Richard Wright, who recorded his parts in 2007, a year before his death, it's not unfair to think of it as a latter day Floyd song.

The Piper's Call is where things start to change and that's a good thing. It's an introspective piece from the outset, but it gets interesting musically around the minute mark and continues to build for another four. It starts getting heavy three and a half minutes in, Gilmour getting delightfully jagged and bluesy. Steve Gadd's drums grow too and there's a real emphasis by the time its done. This last minute and a half may be my favourite part of the whole album, matched only by another rock out in the second half of Dark and Velvet Nights. The longer The Piper's Call runs, the more I like it.

Gilmour turns down the emphasis on A Single Spark but the drums, this time by Adam Betts, make it feel commanding. It's never particularly fast or heavy but it demands our attention, especially when some percussion that sounds rather like corporal punishment arrives a couple of minutes in. Dark and Velvet Nights carries that command forward before it rocks out, but it's also jaunty in a way I didn't expect from Gilmour. It's almost reggae in structure, if not tone, and moves back into more traditional blues rock jam territory as it goes.

In between those two songs is Vita Brevis, a palate cleansing sub sixty second interlude to set the stage for the highlight song, which is Between Two Points. This is an unusual song for two reasons. For one, it's not a Dave Gilmour original, because it's a cover of a Montgolfier Brother song. I had no idea who they were and imagined them to be a deep cut psych band from the late sixties. They turn out instead to be a British dream pop duo and this track was on their 1999 debut album. Also, Gilmour doesn't sing it, handing the mike over to his daughter Romany, who was only twenty-two at the time. She makes it haunting, the sort of song that can pass right by us but also never leave us alone.

She does a fantastic job, her lead vocal as much a highlight as her dad's guitar solo. It may be easy to look past her contribution on harp but it becomes more obvious with each listen, adding a Kate Bush touch that isn't there in the vocals. She takes a straightforward approach there, refusing to do anything flash and making all the more impact because of that decision. I can't be the only one listening who wishes that they collaborate more often. She sings backup on a few other songs but I couldn't isolate where. She also sings on Yes, I Have Ghosts, a bonus track on some editions, but in duet with her father's warm voice.

It's almost surprising after these more interesting songs for the album to drift into conventional territory as it wraps up. Sings and Scattered aren't bad at all, but they feel unimaginative in this company. They're both soft songs that intend to showcase Gilmour's voice against keyboard swells and growing backgrounds. There are interesting moments, like when Scattered suddenly finds an experimental urge around the three minute mark, but mostly they're just there and that's an odd way to wrap up an album that took Gilmour onto new and generally successful musical ground.

They mean that, while I was leaning towards an 8/10 for Luck and Strange, I think I have to lower it to a 7/10. Had it ended after Dark and Velvet Nights, it would have felt a bit short at a breath over half an hour but it would have been stronger and I'd have been happy to stay with that 8/10. Add in the folky Yes, I Have Ghosts as a closer, with its violins and hints at Leonard Cohen, and that would be a surety.

Monday, 14 October 2024

Andy Gillion - Exilium (2024)

Country: UK
Style: Symphonic Melodic Death Metal
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 11 Oct 2024
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | Official Website | YouTube

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.

Tuesday, 24 September 2024

Blitzkrieg - Blitzkrieg (2024)

Given how many NWOBHM-era bands have been reforming and releasing new material, I shouldn't be surprised to see Blitzkrieg added to that list. They were formed back in 1979 as Split Image, but renamed to Blitzkrieg a year later when Brian Ross joined on vocals. They released just one single before splitting up, but up and coming legends Metallica covered its B-side, also called Blitzkrieg, on their first Garage Days Revisited release, along with Diamond Head's Am I Evil? on the flipside of their Creeping Death single. And so Blitzkrieg reformed, released an album, split up, reformed, split up, reformed, knocked out three albums, split up, reformed and seem to mean it this time.

This is their sixth album since that reformation in 2001, though only Ross remains from that point or indeed any other before it, and their first since 2018's Judge Not! It's roughly what you expect from a NWOBHM band, though I do resist labelling 2024 releases that way because it was as much a point in time as a sound. 21st century production aside, You Won't Take Me Alive sounds like it's a song that could easily have been on a 1980 NWOBHM album, but nowadays it's just heavy metal. It's a powerful opener, with elegant guitarwork and clean resonant vocals, plus a drop in intensity midway that's very tasty.

Much of this is Brian Ross, whose vocal style is gloriously out of fashion but nonetheless precisely right for this sort of music. He doesn't scream (except for a rare exception like the one that closes Dragon's Eye), he doesn't growl and he doesn't shriek. He dishes out clean vocals that we can hear and easily understand and often includes a point in his lyrics. That's most notable here in If I Told You, flavoured by its opening sample, sparse riff and plodding bass to be a song about conspiracy theories, JFK, 9/11, Area 51 and the rest. If I told you, I'd have to kill you. However, his resonance is what makes his voice special. The only overt comparison I'd give is to Danny Foxx of Blood Money, who never made it out of the eighties, but he sang faster and with more urgency.

However, it's not all Brian Ross. The rhythm section of Liam Ferguson on bass and Matt Graham on drums, is rock solid, and the guitars sometimes have just as much voice as Ross. There are a couple of them here and I don't know which guitarist delivers which riff or which solo, but I get the feeling that they divvy them up. Certainly there are duelling guitar solos that suggest that both play lead at least at that point. They establish themselves early with the buzzsaw guitar that starts out You Won't Take Me Alive and seem to be simpatico whatever genre they move into, whether it's speed metal midway through Dragon's Eye, power metal on much of the rest of it or neoclassical shred in quite a few solos.

It's weird to suggest that one of those guitarists is Alan Ross, not because he's the son of Brian, a scenario with plenty of precedent nowadays, but because he's had the longest tenure in the band after his father, having joined as late as 2012, thirty-two years after Split Image became Blitzkrieg. Surprisingly, he's also the current vocalist in Tysondog, though I now realise that he didn't sing on their most recent album, Midnight, which I reviewed a couple of years ago, as that was their prior singer, the late John Carruthers. Ross's cohort here is Nick Jennison, the most recent arrival who joined in 2020.

And so this line-up, as recent as it is in context, seems like solid and strong bedrock for the albums to come. Ross is just as good as he's always been behind the mike, bestowing appropriate gravitas on these songs, even duetting acrobatically with himself on the suitably titled Vertigo. Jennison and Ross Jr. are a real highlight for me, bringing some consistent bite with their guitar tone. They can clearly play, as their solos ably demonstrate, especially the duelling ones. If they can conjure a set of more memorable riffs on the next album, they'll be unstoppable. And they're all backed up by a highly reliable rhythm section in Ferguson and Graham, who do the job without ever seeming to stretch themselves.

So what this comes down to is how memorable it's going to end up. I enjoyed all nine tracks, but I'm not sure how many are going to stay with me for long. You Won't Take Me Alive stays the standout from the very outset. That one's memorable. Otherwise it's moments that are memorable rather than complete songs. The frantic section midway through Dragon's Eye is one. The vocal approach in Vertigo is another. The drop late in of Above the Law fits that too, with acoustic guitar and flute but crunchy guitar punctuation and Ross remaining powerful throughout. There's also the hook to I am His Voice; the way they include the Halloween theme in their homage to that film, The Night He Came Home; and the epic opening to the operatic closer, On Olympus High - Aphrodite's Kiss. None of these songs are bad, but it's these moments that are special.

Mostly, I think what I wanted out of this album is something that Blitzkrieg don't want to provide, namely a little more speed. They have all the power they need, across the board, and they have a few moments of pace that are the moments that this material comes alive. More of those and I'd like it a lot more than I do already. Either way, it's good to see Blitzkrieg putting out new material and I look forward to their next album. Why this one was self-titled, I don't know. It's strong but it isn't a career-defining release.

Tuesday, 10 September 2024

Moggs Motel - Moggs Motel (2024)

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

Given that Phil Mogg has fronted UFO for over half a century, it isn't surprising to find UFO within the sound of what I thought was his first solo album but may not be. It appears that it's the debut of a new band that he's fronting, Moggs Motel sans the apostrophe. It can't hurt that Neil Carter is the keyboardist and one of a pair of guitarists, a role he's served in a couple of stints with UFO, including now, if they're still officially together. I'm just happy that Mogg is still recording, given that he suffered a 2022 heart attack that prompted the cancellation of the final UFO tour.

He's recognisable here, of course, but he puts a bit more grit into his voice than I'm used to, so he ends up a little bluesier and dirtier and I like that a lot. It works well with the guitar tone and the driving nature of many of these songs. That starts with the opening track, Apple Pie, where he's more emphatic and almost vicious at points. It's not all about melody here, though that's present, of course; it's also about attitude, even when the song shifts into handclaps, when it gets sassier.

He's the only male vocalist here, I believe, but there's certainly a female voice in the background on a few tracks, one that sounds like it was born singing gospel. It's there on Sunny Side of Heaven, which is a driving rocker, but it returns on Princess Bride and especially Tinker Tailor, where things shift more into gospel without ever leaving rock behind, in ways reminiscent of Lynyrd Skynyrd on their 1991 album. It's not there throughout, though, which helps keep the album admirably varied.

The heaviest songs are the driving ones, especially Sunny Side of Heaven, but there's heaviness in the slower songs too, like Weather and Other People's Lives. I like Weather a lot, with its simple but effective riff, flamboyant guitar solo and relished vocal delivery from Mogg. More than anything, I like the sections where it drops out of the riff and does really interesting things. However, my favourite tracks are the ones that fit in between these two approaches and a lot of why comes down to the hooks.

I Thought I Knew You is more AC/DC than UFO in its riffing, but the latter is there in the melodies and the breakdowns. This is the first song that absolutely nails its chorus, Mogg falling into quite the effortless groove. The other one that manages it is Wrong House, which has a bizarre intro in Harry's Place, a minute long interlude that's clearly there to set a scene. It's driven by flute and it's certainly evocative but, as much as I like it, I'm not convinced it works to set up Wrong House. Tony Newton's excellent bassline does that much better.

The more Mogg finds those grooves, the more this reminds of UFO and it's never a long way away. While UFO could rock like nobody else, whether the lead guitarist was Michael Schenker or Vinnie Moore or any number of others in between, they were incredibly good at quiet moments too, not only in outright ballads, and that holds for Moggs Motel. Face of an Angel opens atmospherically in rain. Princess Bride gets elegant towards the end with some wonderful swells, elegance that's happy to roll right into the orchestration in Other People's Lives. Shane starts out with keyboards that are almost trying to mimic a harpsichord.

What's perhaps most telling is that, while I didn't have much trouble picking out some highlights, I Thought I Knew You and Wrong House standing out every time through and Apple Pie an emphatic opener however many times I run through the album, even with the heaviest song following right on its tail, everything else stands up to be counted too. There isn't a duff song here and there isn't an average one either, unless we question why Harry's Place is there. I liked this on the first listen but it didn't knock my socks off. Each further time through, it gets better and better until I really can't justify not including it on my highly recommended list for the year.

And that means an 8/10 rather than than a 9/10, because there are flaws if we look closely enough and, as I mentioned, it still doesn't blow me away. However, it's consistently strong across a dozen tracks, versatile enough for everything to delineate itself immediately and memorable enough to have me humming bars from it when I wander off to grab lunch. And, more than anything, it's the epitome of welcoming when I wander back. I've probably listened through a dozen times now and I haven't once felt the urge to even skip a single track. This is really good stuff and I hope Mogg will be healthy enough to tour in support of it.

Wednesday, 4 September 2024

Rosetta Stone - Under the Weather (2024)

Country: UK
Style: Gothic Rock
Rating: 6/10
Release Date: 30 Aug 2024
Sites: Bandcamp | Instagram | Twitter | Wikipedia

Rosetta Stone are a gothic rock band from the second wave, formed as far back as 1988 but with a surprisingly skimpy output for that long life. Their debut album was An Eye for the Main Chance in 1991 but this is only their fourth regular studio release since then, with two others that may count depending on your personal definitions. Either way, they don't release new albums often but this one follows Cryptology by only four years.

They're very much a pop-oriented goth band who used to feature jingly guitars that have morphed into electronica over the years. I haven't heard them in decades, so my memory may be letting me down, but they sound very electronic now, the three participants (for want of a better term) easily distinguished but all highly prominent. The vocalist is Porl King, who used to play guitar, but likely didn't this time out, and keyboards, which I'm sure he still does. Vocals aside, he's overshadowed a lot of the time by Madame Razor, the drum machine that almost defines the band's sound now.

That leaves Karl North on bass, who reminds of Peter Hook from Joy Division and New Order, both of which would seem to count as obvious influences. Many songs here find Joy Division vibes, not least Words to That Affect, but they're always flavoured by the drum machine, which makes them more electronic and thus more reminiscent of New Order. The bass isn't the first thing that grabs our attention, but it gradually grows until we simply can't ignore it, at which point I found myself actively following it, whatever else was happening.

The best bassline here is surely on Coherence, seven tracks in, but the more we focus on the bass, the more good basslines show up, starting with the opening title track, also the first single. It's a crucial note that my favourite songs are the ones with my favourite basslines. The beats work for me, in the sense that they contribute a needed and worthy aspect to the overall sound, but they don't play better to me on any one song than any other. King's vocals work for me too, but in that same sense. Occasionally, he delivers a line in a catchier fashion, like the choruses to We Turned Away or All the Devils, but he fundamentally does the same thing across all these tracks.

So this became almost entirely about the bass for me, starting most of the way through my first listen, with only the occasional keyboard riff helping to elevate one song over another, as on We Turned Away. That means that Coherence remains my favourite song, because it has my favourite bassline, but then it's probably Host and All the Devils, along with Under the Weather. This feels weird to me, because I can't remember another album where the bass dictates my appreciation this much, so I tried to figure out why.

I think it boils down to Rosetta Stone having such a stripped down sound, which is unusual for the sort of band that's survived for almost forty years intact. With the vocals telling stories and the drums merely keeping beat, it would normally fall to the guitars or keyboards to drive the songs forward, but they don't seem to want to do that. The keyboards are there but they feel more like decoration than rhythm and, if there are guitars at all, I mistook them for keyboards. Thus it falls to Karl North to play his bass like it's a rhythm guitar and a bass put together. It also means that a song is a song, because there's nothing in the instrumentation that can really apply emphasis.

And that's fine, but I tend to prefer my gothic rock denser in sound, whether it's the gothic rock of the Sisters of Mercy or the gothic metal of Tristania. Rosetta Stone aren't interested in density of sound and actively seem to avoided any possibility of crunch. So, while they still sound gothic, they remind me more of Joy Division than the Sisters, but still not as dense, meaning that, while I liked this, I always felt there was something missing.

Monday, 2 September 2024

Jon Anderson & The Band Geeks - True (2024)

There's some history here to kick off with. Jon Anderson is the former lead singer of Yes, of course, last heard on 1000 Hands: Chapter One, a thirty years in the making album finally released in 2019. He's backed here by the Band Geeks, which are a project of Richie Castellano, currently working as the rhythm guitarist and keyboard player in Blue Öyster Cult. Band Geek started as a podcast but grew into a band that covered songs on YouTube, with a constantly changing line-up of friends and guests. Anderson appreciated their covers of Yes songs enough to tour with them covering classic Yes tracks. That collaboration has now reached another level with this album of original music.

So, it's not Yes, but it absolutely sounds like Yes and not only because it prominently features Jon Anderson's iconic voice. There are overt Yes moments all over the album like a rash, starting with the phrasing of True Messenger, but especially including the bass work on Shine On, the beat early in Counties and Countries and the acoustic guitar intro to Make It Right. Clearly these musicians love Yes and not just because they're backing Jon Anderson. The era isn't singular but is mostly a combination of late seventies and early eighties Yes, a point when the songs were shorter and far more commercial in the main.

That era is backed up by occasional hints at what Anderson did in Jon and Vangelis, Counties and Countries veering into a Vangelis-esque fanfare and some of Anderson's vocal approach from that project. However, it isn't for long and the song clocks in at a breath under ten minutes, so we've generally forgotten those moments by the time we get to the end, with a prominent jazzy keyboard solo that isn't remotely like anything Vangelis might produce. Anderson merely has a lot of history to draw on and clearly not everything here sounds like his best known material with Yes.

I should mention that not every song is long, with Counties and Countries the shortest of only two worthy of that description, the other being Once Upon a Dream, a sixteen and a half minute epic. In fact, three of the nine tracks are done under four minutes with four others ranging from four to six. Some of them are even relatively straightforward for prog rock, Shine On the most obvious of those, regardless of that elegant basswork from Castellano.

Even though the songs take different approaches, the album is consistently strong, though there are clear highlights. I'd call out Once Upon a Dream as the best of them, and I'll cover that shortly, but I like Make It Right a lot too. It's a slower, more deliberate song but it has a gentle majesty to it. Even when it ramps up somewhat in its second half, it keeps that majesty in the way that a band like Magnum almost patented. It's another simpler song too, without much that's progressive, but it's highly effective nonetheless, all the way to the gospel moments at the end. It's a song that we feel rather than marvel at, even if there are moments of the latter.

The gentleness of Make It Right also continues into Realization Part Two, one of the three minute songs, which also adds a mild African flavour. It's only hinted at in beats and late vocal harmonies, but it could easily be funked up and jazzed up to fit fairly on Paul Simon's Graceland album. If I had to pick another highlight, it would be True Messenger, which opens the album as it means to go on. It's a strong opener, but I'd rank it after these highlights but above everything else.

I should emphasise that none of the lesser songs let the side down. I can't say I'm a huge fan of the closer, Thank God, for instance, even though it opens like a Police song, but that's partly because it can't hope to do much in comparison to the sixteen and a half minute epic before it. And that leads me back into Once Upon a Dream, which is likely to be everyone's standout track, ironically given that much of the album's success is in starting and finishing things in far fewer minutes.

I love the vocal rhythms that open Once Upon a Dream, which hearken back to some of the songs on 1000 Hands originating in Anderson's vocal exercises. He has a great choice of words for their sounds and, while I'm not expecting vocal coaches to react to a song this long, I'd love to hear what they might have to say about this opening. Of course, there's time enough for a lot more than just vocals and it stands up to that expectatoin. There's a Rainbow-esque guitar solo early on and an angelic midsection with copious use of triangle, not to forget a particularly wild transition in the thirteenth minute. It's a gift that keeps on giving.

And that holds true for the album as a whole. I'd say that this is better than 1000 Hands, but not by much, maybe not by enough to get a higher rating from me. Should I round a 7½ up or down? Going up would mean it sitting on my Highly Recommended List for the year. I think I'm OK with that. The most important thing, thinking on a grander scale than just one album, is that this is easily better than the most recent Yes album, The Quest from 2021. And I see that Alan White has left Yes, so it has to be said that Steve Howe is the only long term member left. Maybe those reunion calls could get somewhere. And, on the basis of this, maybe they should.

Monday, 6 May 2024

My Dying Bride - A Mortal Binding (2024)

I liked My Dying Bride's previous album, 2020's The Ghost of Orion, rather a lot, though it's proved a little polarising with fans. Some see it as the best thing they've ever done, while others, well, do not with vehemence. I wonder what the reaction to this one will be, given that it's less a follow up and more a reaffirmation of everything that this band does. Sure, as with that prior album, it's all fundamentally doom metal, but it's done with serious emphasis this time, almost as if they didn't mean it before and they really, really mean it now.

Lead vocalist Aaron Stainthorpe moved a little back into the band's original doom/death territory on The Ghost of Orion, but he doubles down here, practically spitting out his lyrics at the start of opener, Her Dominion. He stays harsh for much of this song and he follows suit on a bunch of other tracks, most obviously The Apocalyptist. Of course, he doesn't stay there throughout, shifting to a clean melancholy voice for Thornwyck Hymn and The 2nd of Three Bells, but returning to harsh when a song needs it. There's a neat alternation between clean and harsh on Crushed Embers as he duets with himself.

Maybe it's just the crisp production by Mark Mynett, but it feels like the two guitarists, Andrew Craighan and Neil Blanchett, both mean it all the more this time too. The riffing here is cavernous from the glorious staccato riff early in Her Dominion onwards. The slower metal gets, the more important the riffs become. The riffs on this album are consistently instant, few of them remotely complex and some slow enough to be sets of power chords, but every one nailing what it needs to do. For something completely different, there's an elegant duet between acoustic and electric guitars to open up A Starving Heart too.

Back to the production again, the bass of Lena Abé is easily distinguishable within the mix and it's far more than just an underpinning for the heaviness of the guitars. Of course, it does that and it does it deliciously, but it also does a lot more, especially in moments where the guitars step back and Abé often carries on, often serving as the change between sections. The drum sound is strong too and returning drummer Dan Mullins, who played with My Dying Bride from 2007-2012, joining at the same time as Abé, who never left, has a varied approach that's sometimes patient but also sometimes prominent, as on Unthroned Creed where he could easily have held back far more but adds a jagged rhythm instead.

That leaves Shaun McGowan, who's responsible for the vast majority of the gothic feel nowadays, not through his keyboards but through his violin. Those keyboards are there right from the start, adding texture behind the opening of Her Dominion, but we have to pay attention to hear it over most of the album. The violin, on the other hand, dominates whenever it shows up, which is often. It's a perfect instrument to echo the melancholy of Stainthorpe's clean vocals, but it works just as well adding that aching feel behind his harsh voice too on The Apocalyptist, and of course serving as a soloing instrument.

Apparently there was tension within the band while they were recording this, which ought to be a shame. We always want people to get along, but maybe that friction helped bring the vibrancy to this album that wasn't there last time out. Is it anger and frustration that fuels the attitude that pervades this album? I have no idea, but whatever it is worked a charm. Everything here is stellar. Of course, it tends to happen this way but my first 9/10 for the year came as recently as 29th April and yet here's another one on 3rd May. I loved it on a first listen but it just gets better on repeats.

Her Dominion kicks it off hard with angry harsh vocals and a vicious punch of a riff. Opening single Thornwyck Hymn and The 2nd of Three Bells shift back to the clean approach they ran with for lots of albums. All three are excellent songs, but Unthroned Creed raises the bar with a solid chugging riff and a catchy vocal line, the combination reminding of Candlemass. On my first time through, The Apocalyptist after it was my favourite of these seven tracks by far, but, on each return visit, Unthroned Creed threatens to match it.

That said, The Apocalyptist is gorgeous. It's the longest track here and it's the standout, its riffs simple but thoroughly effective, it's vocals blistering. Stainthorpe gets serious attitude into his death growls here and no less feeling in the clean ones. There's also a delightful violin during the elegant midsection and the song grows and evolves effortlessly, even though it travels quite a lot of ground over its eleven and a half minutes. A Starving Heart is an achingly slow counter with a vocal that moves from pleading to angry to commanding. Crushed Embers takes the album home with style.

This is a generous album at almost fifty-five minutes, even if it's slightly shorter than The Ghost of Orion, and it's consistently strong throughout. I'm half a dozen listens in now and, every time, I'm just as engrossed by every song as on my first time through. I liked its predecessor enough to give it a highly recommended 8/10 here, but this is easily a step up. I wonder how the folk who see that one as their best album thus far—I don't, by the way—will see this one.

Friday, 3 May 2024

Praying Mantis - Defiance (2024)

Country: UK
Style: Hard Rock
Rating: 9/10
Release Date: 19 Apr 2024
Sites: Facebook | Official Website | Twitter | Wikipedia | YouTube

I only review new rock and metal at Apocalypse Later and I've often talked about the main reason why I do that. So many of my fellow fans back in the eighties seem to have fallen prey to the belief that "all new music sucks". They're quite clearly wrong and I'd cite the fifteen hundred albums I've reviewed over the past six years as evidence for that. However, those people are also missing out on the fact that some of the bands who they use as examples of why rock music was so much better back then aren't just still going but are putting out their best material now.

Case in point: Praying Mantis. They formed way back in 1974 when I was toddling around causing a lot of heartache for my parents and they only released a sole album back in the day, Time Tells No Lies in 1981. Sure, it's a good one, but I'd suggest their most recent couple of albums are right up there with it, if not above it. That's Katharsis a couple of years ago and Defiance right now. This is a good one on a first listen, which is always a telling sign, but it grows on a second and cements its stature on a third.

The opening three songs explain why. From the Start is a solid opener, lively if not fast, there to be an attention grabber. Defiance is slower but has a majesty that builds it wonderfully, with an epic feel that makes it surprising to realise that it's over in four minutes and change, making it shorter than the opener. That majesty returns in songs like Forever in My Heart or Never Can Say Goodbye and, after a few listens, seems to pervade pretty much everything. Feelin' Lucky ups the tempo to rock out but with an elegance that reminds of the sort of thing we might expect from Demon.

They make for a strong opening, ably setting the stage for what's to come. Before I tell you that a few later songs are better still, let's dive into the acknowledgement that track four is a cover, the old Joe Lynn Turner-era Rainbow classic, I Surrender. It's an excellent version with another superb vocal performance from John Cuijpers and some sumptuous dual guitar work from Tino Troy and Andy Burgess. However, it initially seems rather redundant because it doesn't add anything to an established classic that we already know.

The point is that there's history here. It was written by Russ Ballard and its first release was on a Head East single in 1980. Praying Mantis recorded a version during the Time Tells No Lies sessions in 1981, but they didn't release it on the grounds that Rainbow had just done that. I presume that led to the selection of a Kinks song instead, All Day and All of the Night, for that album and as the second single from it. And so this is the modern day Praying Mantis re-staking their claim to it as a song that fits their style perfectly, which it does.

What's particularly telling is that other songs here, especially Give It Up, unfold in the same style of emphatic arena rock. This is an original and it's not quite as good as I Surrender, but it deserves to be in the same setlist. Forever in My Heart and One Heart would play wonderfully to arena rock fans too, both starting out like power ballads even if only the former stays there. These just ooze with the majesty I talked about earlier, the second adding an elegant acoustic guitar solo during its second half, power chords maintaining the impact behind it. There's some major sustain on the vocals of John Cuijpers on these, not that he skimps on that elsewhere.

That emphasises how he's a real boon to this band nowadays. He's the most recent arrival, joining in 2013 alongside drummer Hans in't Zandt, their decade plus with Praying Mantis cementing how this is easily the most consistent line-up they've ever had. Both simply fit here, even though both are Dutch and the band is English. The instrumental Nightswim is no less worthy an inclusion here for its lack of vocals, but when Cuijpers rips into the next song, Standing Tall, we see just how much he belongs in this band.

I mentioned that, as strong as the opening three songs are, there are better still to come. While I can't resist Forever in My Heart, even being generally put off by power ballads, but Standing Tall is my easy pick for the best song here and my personal favourite. It starts out like Rush and turns into Demon, with a dash of Survivor in the commerciality of its riffs and, as it builds, one of Golden Earring in its incessant drive. That's a catchy keyboard riff but an excellent guitar solo too and the best thing about it is that it manages to be a faster paced rocker without losing the majesty of the slower songs. But there's also Give It Up and Let's See and Never Can Say Goodbye and... let's just say that this is a damn fine album that ends even better than it begins.

What fascinates me the most is that we appear to be in a heyday of classic bands who predated my discovery of rock and metal in 1984 but who are putting out amazing material right now. It seems bizarre to suggest it, but could I come up with a theoretical tour more enticing to me in 2024 than Praying Mantis, Demon and Diamond Head, this band seeming like the missing link between the two? I don't think so, unless we add Weapon too for good measure. Let's revisit that in a few weeks when I review the new Demon album.

Tuesday, 9 April 2024

DragonForce - Warp Speed Warriors (2024)

I reviewed DragonForce's eighth studio album, Extreme Power Metal, with reservations because I'd worried about whether they'd turned into a caricature of themselves, especially with a name like Extreme Power Metal. While that album seemed to start out that way, they did win me over during the opening track and I found myself enjoying most of it, at least up until the Celine Dion cover that seemed entirely unnecessary. So, I don't have quite as many reservations coming into this, their ninth album, though I have to still wonder if they've finally fallen prey to their gimmick. Well, they're still thinking about doing that but they're mostly not quite there yet.

This time, I was on board with the opening track, Astro Warrior Anthem, from the very outset, because it's a strong power metal song played at DragonForce speed with themes and melodies hurtling every which way and tasking us with focusing on them. It's obviously one of the best songs on the album and it makes a lot of sense to kick off with it. After a few listens, I wouldn't hesitate to call it my favourite, though I have a fondness for Space Marine Corp too, which has a subdued pace compared to most of these songs. Somehow the chants, which could easily have gone so far past cheesy to be ridiculous, work for me. Why, I'm not sure, but they do. DragonForce do anthems and this is a real earworm of an anthem. All together now: "No time to rest till we kill all the scum!"

There's another earworm right after it too in Doomsday Party, which is a heavy disco number that reminds a lot of Boney M wrapped up in power metal clothing. Once again, I like this one a lot but I'd be remiss if I didn't point out that it really ought to be notably too cheesy to be taken seriously. Then again, Boney M are an old school guilty pleasure band for me, not only because I grew up on the cassette my parents kept in the car of The Magic of Boney M when I was a kid. And so there's a lot here that I like, even if perhaps I shouldn't.

Where the cheese starts to become a little much is Power of the Triforce, which I presume is about the Legend of Zelda videogame franchise. I'm OK with this one, which is otherwise a strong power metal song, but I did find myself rolling my eyes a little at where the lyrics went and how seriously Marc Hudson delivers them. And what was too much is Kingdom of Steel, which has a name like an AI-created Manowar song but feels like a heavied up Disney movie anthem. It has the slowest pace of anything here and it features a woah woah backing vocal that I could swear has been lifted off the Moana soundtrack. Sure, it's catchy, but its overblown orchestration is emphatically not for me.

The rest of the album inevitably falls in between the best stuff and the worst stuff. Songs like The Killer Queen and Pixel Prison are decent enough, not as memorable as Astro Warrior Anthem but not as cheesy as Space Marine Corp. They wrap up the album in the way we expect from this band and nobody buying it with full knowledge of what DragonForce do are going to be disappointed by them. Where that though comes into play isn't just a lesser song like Kingdom of Steel but a truly definitive one like Burning Heart.

And I have to end my review with that, because it's almost the stereotypical DragonForce song, so much so that it's less an actual piece of music and more of a challenge for the band to outdo what they so famously did on Through the Fire and Flames. The whole point of this song is to do more, a challenge indeed for a band who are a mandatory selection for new YouTube reactors who have no real idea what metal is. The only power metal song that comes up more often in that realm is the live version of The Bard's Song and Valhalla by Blind Guardian, for completely different reasons.

I honestly can't imagine a more DragonForce song than Burning Heart. It isn't merely those rapid fire melodies that were so effective on Astro Warrior Anthem. It isn't just that famous double act of Herman Li and Sam Totman "performing guitar histrionics", a term that has to be included here because "playing guitar" just doesn't cut it. It isn't only the telling fact that Gee Anzalone is able to steal some of their thunder by delivering a truly ambitious drum pace, especially early on. It's that Burning Heart is every note possible shoehorned into a breath under six minutes. It's a world record breaking attempt of a song and, to me at least, it's too much. And I'm a speed metal fan.

Take what you will from that. Some people will lose their minds to Burning Heart. I'll look past it to Astro Warrior Anthem, an insane DragonForce track that's also a damn good song and, even if I'm unable to fully express why, Space Marine Corp, which is a rollicking good time. Which camp are you in?

Wednesday, 3 April 2024

Bruce Dickinson - The Mandrake Project (2024)

Country: UK
Style: Heavy Metal
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 1 Mar 2024
Sites: Instagram | Metal Archives | Official Website | Wikipedia | YouTube

This is a strong album from Iron Maiden frontman Bruce Dickinson, his first in nineteen years, his previous solo release being Tyranny of Souls in 2005 and his first album since Maiden's Senjutsu in 2021. It's clearly heavy metal but with an emphasis on heavy rather than speed; it flirts with doom and doesn't remotely sound like Maiden except in certain moments when his immediately recognisable voice falls into the sort of patterns that we know from so many Maiden albums. It's patient stuff and while the hooks seem good on the first time through, it requires multiple listens to truly appreciate them.

It's clear that Bruce and his colleagues are on form in the opener, Afterglow of Ragnarok, which is patient heavy metal. Many Doors to Hell follows suit and then Rain on the Graves escalates things as the most immediate song on the album. This becomes an obvious highlight the moment Bruce starts to tell its story and it's very much a storytelling number, the instrumentation falling back to allow him to effectively tell us to pay attention while he recounts what's going on with utter relish. It gets better as it goes too, so I'm not shocked that it was the second single except to note that I don't know why it wasn't the first. That was Afterglow of Ragnarok.

He doesn't stay in storytelling mode throughout, in the sense of inviting us to his campfire so that he can have us hang on every word, but he's back there for Eternity Has Failed later in the album. This one opens up with flutes and ambience, as if we're on a battlefield after all the fighting has been done. Something epic happened here and we're eager to find out what. Story is important to this album though, because this isn't just a record; there are comic books within the package too, but I haven't read them so can't speak to where they take proceedings and how they all tie to the lyrical content of these songs.

Mostly, what I caught from the music is a epic approach, which shouldn't surprise for the singer in Iron Maiden but this is a very different sort of epic. Even Sonata (Immortal Beloved), the nigh on ten minute closer, a Maiden trademark, doesn't feel remotely like Maiden. This is more old school heavy/power metal, built on hooks and themes rather than stories, and it's a haunting example of that style, with Dickinson repeatedly pleading, "Save me now!" with some huge emotional impact.

There are also sounds here that wouldn't normally sit in heavy metal but play into that epic feel. Those plaintive flutes that kick off Eternity Has Failed have a Native American flavour to them as well as a Japanese one. Resurrection Men opens up like a spaghetti western soundtrack. Fingers in the Wounds adds some middle eastern textures that work wonderfully, even though everybody and their dog is throwing those into metal songs nowadays.

There's another touch that I wasn't expecting. Face in the Mirror starts out softer and stays there but Shadow of the Gods, which starts out softer too, doesn't. When it eventually ramps up during its second half, it gets angry in a very modern way, almost channelling some nu metal for a while that I wasn't expecting from the air raid siren, a nickname he lives up to often here, soaring above the music in a way that only he can. He doesn't need to get trendy and he generally doesn't, but a moment in Shadow of the Gods does go there and somehow it works.

In fact, everything works here. This is a deep album and we know that from moment one, because it feels inherently deep and epic and meaningful, but we also have a feeling that it's a lot deeper than we might initially think. I liked it on a first listen, but I liked it more on a second and I have to move on after maybe five or six times through with me liking it progressively more each time but with a strong feeling that it hasn't reached its peak for me yet. I'm going with an 8/10 but it could well warrant a 9/10.

Maybe I'll get a chance to come back in a few months and see. For now, I'm staying at 8/10 because some of these songs still feel like a step above the others. I'm thinking the two bard songs, Rain of the Graves and Eternity Has Failed, then the closer, Sonata (Immortal Beloved), which may well be the best of them all. Nothing else lets the side down, but nothing else touches those three either. Maybe in time they will. Mistress of Mercy is already thinking about it.

Thursday, 21 March 2024

Steve Hackett - The Circus and the Nightwhale (2024)

Country: UK
Style: Progressive Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 16 Feb 2024
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | Twitter | Wikipedia

All aboard! All aboard! Legendary guitarist Steve Hackett, fresh from his live album looking back at Genesis's Foxtrot album half a century on, is back with a new album. It's built around a concept but that doesn't really take hold until the second half when the whale shows up. There's certainly some circus material early on but I got so caught up in the music that I never grasped the reasons why and what they have to do with a whale. Every time the album reached Breakout nine tracks in, I was freshly reminded that there's a concept and every time it ended, I wondered what it was.

It seems like there ought to be a story to People of the Smoke, which opens up the album, but it's never a focus for me. There are all sorts of ambient accoutrements to take my mind away from the story and by the time I'm ready to pay attention to it, it goes entirely instrumental, as if the story is left hanging in the clouds. And talking of them, These Passing Clouds is up next as an interlude, completely instrumental. There are a few of those here and they're often delicious, so why would we focus on a story, especially as even Hackett himself would freely admit that he's far more of a guitarist than a vocalist.

There are songs too. Taking You Down is a more groove oriented vocal song with a prominent sax from Rob Townsend, as straightforward as People of the Smoke was wildly playful. Enter the Ring is quite the delicate prog song. When the flute of Hackett's brother John shows up, you know who is immediately going to spring out as a comparison and it's a fair one, given where the song goes from there, even if Hackett's guitar solo isn't particularly like anything that Martin Barre might play. Get Me Out is a real stalker of a song while Ghost Moon and Living Love is softer, technically counting as a ballad, I suppose, but one with choral voices and orchestration in addition to a more laid back Hackett.

There's a voice in Found and Lost too, even though it initially seems to be another interlude. It's a sub-two minute mood piece, drenched in film noir cigarette smoke, and it features some effective smooth singing from Hackett, even if it's far more honest than it is accomplished. It leads into the rain of Enter the Ring, which marks the first point at which I felt like I was on an old school Genesis album, though it veers over to Jethro Tull territory after the flute shows up and everything drifts into perky folk rock.

There are other instruments worthy of note here, beyond the expected Hackett guitarwork, both electric and acoustic and also on mandolin. Townsend on sax and John Hackett on flute are easily the most obvious across the album, as they both show up multiple times, but the most notable on one appearance is surely Malik Mansurov's tar, which is a lute mostly known from classical music in Azerbaijan. It introduces Circo Inferno, which is as unlike Ghost Moon and Living Love before it as can be comfortably imagined. It's a thoroughly alive song, driving through those ethnic sounds to some cool weird stuff early in the second half and a seriously angry sax emerging from it. This is a wicked song and it's an utter delight.

It's here that the concept leaps out to grab our attention, because, while Circo Inferno clearly has to do with a circus and Breakout is a lively ninety second intermission between that and All at Sea, it then starts to have to do with the whale. The guitar churn from Breakout is there too, but it's a lot less immediate, dwarfed instead by the creature's presence. I still have no idea why this album is all about a circus and a nightwhale, but it's clear when it moves from one to the other because Hackett's guitar sounds like an orca in All at Sea and the percussion starts to sound like waves. We would know that Into the Nightwhale is all about the whale, even if it didn't hawk it in its title.

Most of these later pieces are instrumental, but they're more like soundtrack material than what served so well as interludes earlier in the album. However, Into the Nightwhale is vocal, in an Alan Parsons Project vein, and Wherever You Are stays vocal in a more upbeat dynamic vein, which the guitar of Steve Hackett is more than happy for. He's entirely electric here and he goes for searing rather than introspective. The vibrant drumming at the end of this track backs up just how much life there is in it. And yet, White Dove calms us right back down again to wrap up the album in the most peaceful way possible, a soft acoustic instrumental piece with a Mediterranean vibe. What's a nightwhale doing there?

And so I have no idea what this concept album is doing, at least outside the cinematic section late on, from Circo Inferno to Into the Nightwhale. However, as individual songs and pieces of music, with any idea of concept ruthlessly ignored, there's some tasty stuff here. Found and Lost is a hugely evocative piece, with its delicate harp, keyboard swells and sultry saxophone. Circo Inferno is wild abandon, life as immediate as only a carny can pitch it. All at Sea is immersive, a piece of music as easy for us to see as hear. And Ghost Moon and Living Love, as soft as it is, is exquisite, surely the best song here, even if others are far more eager to have us vote for them.

Now, am I going to wake up three weeks from now with a cartoon light bulb glowing over my head because I've suddenly realised what it's about? I doubt it but I like it anyway.

Wednesday, 13 March 2024

Big Big Train - The Likes of Us (2024)

Country: UK
Style: Progressive Rock
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 1 Mar 2024
Sites: Facebook | Twitter | Vimeo | Wikipedia | YouTube

Here's something new that I feel that I need to listen to a lot more to appropriately review it, but I simply can't put everything else on hold to leave it on repeat for the next week. Part of that is the fact that I don't know this band at all, so this sixteenth album for them is my introduction to them. They were formed in 1990, right before rock music shifted in a completely different direction and I was coincidentally shifting away from it after a decade of deep diving because real life knocked on the door and said hi.

However, part of it is that Big Big Train play deceptively deep British prog rock. It's all pleasant on a first listen, the tone very accessible. Light Left in the Day is a strong opener, the first song to get inside my brain, and there are hints of old school Marillion in some of its guitars and drum fills, an easy way to get close to my heart. However, the band's overall sound is more new school Marillion than old and even then not particularly often. There's plenty of Solstice here too, especially in the songs that have pastoral sections, like the opening of Beneath the Masts, with its dominant fiddle and delicate acoustic guitar. There's some seventies Genesis as well, especially on Bookmarks.

Talking of Beneath the Masts, it's the album's epic at seventeen and a half minutes, outstripping Miramare at a mere ten, and that means that there's plenty of opportunity to get imaginative. I would call its jazzy midsection the closest to traditional complex prog that the album gets, and it's one of the best sections in any of these tracks. Its closest competitor is Miramare's midsection that hints towards choral music and space rock. However, even these proggy sections aren't enough to define the band's sound as they travel so much more musical ground over the hour and change that the album runs.

There's brass on both Light Left in the Day and Love is the Light. There's interesting percussion on Oblivion. There's pop music in Beneath the Masts along with the most overt prog. Skates On has a Beatles-esque vibe to it that also hints at ELO harmonies. And that's just to mention the first four tracks. There are four more to come, beginning with the ten minutes of Miramare, a host of which feature what sounds like a teasing xylophone and some of which bring back that brass. The Likes of Us is a long album, but it's a constantly inventive one, if we dig beyond its accessible surface as we really should.

I can't say where this fits within Big Big Train's broader body of work, as their die hard fans surely can. However, there have been changes within the band to suggest that this might be different in some ways. The two mainstays in the band have been the two founder members, Gregory Spawton and Andy Poole, but the latter left in 2018 after almost three decades. That leaves Nick D'Virgilio with the next longest tenure to Spawton, having joined in 2019 along with another couple of long term members, David Longdon and Dave Gregory. However, Gregory left in 2020 and Longdon died in 2021, prompting a host of relatively new members.

This is the first album for Alberto Bravin, their new lead singer, who does a great job at conning us newbies into thinking he's been with the band forever. It's also the first album for Oskar Holldorff on keyboards. It isn't the first album for Dave Foster and Clare Lindley, but they both joined since 2020, meaning that four of the seven members weren't there before COVID. That has to affect the sound of any band, especially one this versatile. I look forward to dipping into earlier albums as a way of seeing where they came from and how different this truly is.

In the meantime, I'm still digging into this one. That first impression of a pleasant and accessible sound held true on repeat listens, but a second time through deepened every track considerably and a third took me further again. Light Left in the Day was the most immediate track for me, but Miramare matched it on my second listen and Beneath the Masts keeps growing on me, as I start to see its bigger picture. However three listens just isn't enough to do this album justice. It's good stuff, clearly, enough for me to not feel hesitant about awarding it an highly recommended 8/10, but I can't imagine that it's let me in on all its secrets yet. I hope to be able to listen to it more to let it grow as it should.

Monday, 11 March 2024

Judas Priest - Invincible Shield (2024)

This is an important album for Judas Priest, for a couple of reasons. One is that it's 2024 and their debut album, Rocka Rolla, came out in 1974, so they're being identified as the first metal band to release albums half a century apart. I guess the validity of that depends if you count someone like Deep Purple or not. The other is that, regardless of how long they've been doing this, the previous Priest album, Firepower in 2018, was seen as a high point in their career, winning a whole bunch of end of year awards. How would they follow that up?

Pretty well as it turns out. This doesn't reach the same heights, but it's still a very good album on every front, as epitomised by its opener, Panic Attack and indeed the first three opening tracks. It kicks off very well indeed and we surely can't have got past the title track without wondering if it would match its predecessor in power and impact.

Panic Attack is quintessential Priest, with solid riffs and powerful lead vocals. The guitar solos are gorgeous, one guitarist handing over to the other, then both teaming up for an absolutely joyous joint solo. I couldn't tell you which one is the work of Glenn Tipton and which Richie Faulkner, but I can't fault either of them. They both do wonderful work. Rob Halford hits all the notes he used to hit back in the day, even if, of course, he wasn't on that debut. There's also a some serious pace on Scott Travis's drums during the finalé. And that's everyone except the man who's been with them the longest, bassist Ian Hill, who joined Priest before I was born.

The title track is another highlight, adding an even more traditionally catchy chorus, something a Priest album is never short on, even on their least impactful releases. In between those two, The Serpent and the King is another excellent track. It's not quite up to its bookends but it's so strong that, had we heard it in isolation, we'd still be talking it up as an impeccable new Priest song. Any other spot on this album and it would stand out, but in between those two gems, it's just another highlight.

Devil in Disguise is where it slows down, maintaining the power but ditching the speed. Those first three tracks don't emulate something like Painkiller, but they're all notably up tempo, reminding anyone not paying attention just how much Priest had influenced the birth of speed metal and, in its wake, thrash metal. Devil in Disguise, Gates of Hell and Crown of Horns are all happy to be pure heavy metal, without any need to influence a new genre. They chug along effortlessly and exude a studded leather archetype. Much of the rest of the album follows suit.

Those are all good songs, as indeed are all the others to follow, this running to eleven tracks all told. However, it's the faster tracks that stir up my blood, which generally means those three openers and As God is My Witness, where Halford remains slower than the instruments around him but just as powerful. These faster songs are sonic weapons, while the rest of the tracks epitomise the title, obviously capable of withstanding anything thrown their way but not interested in particularly dealing out any damage of their own unless absolutely necessary.

And so whether this is as strong as Firepower may depend on what you want from a Priest track. I might love a slow Priest classic like Victim of Changes with a passion, but it's The Ripper and Electric Eye and Painkiller I'd throw on to feel invulnerable. There's not as much of that here, those four faster tracks coming closest. The majority of these are a throwback to their more commercial material, such as Breaking the Law and You've Got Another Thing Comin', but with a modern elegant edge to them. The best example here is probably Crown of Horns, a peach of a song that I'm sure the American audience will adore.

For my part, I love that song but I generally prefer those openers, so this album is wonderfully strong for me but doesn't live up to the promise it kicks off with.

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