Immortal - War Against All (2023)

Country: Norway
Style: Black Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 26 May 2023
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There's an irony in the fact that Demonaz, founding guitarist and chief lyricist in Immortal, had to effectively retire from the band in 1997 because of severe tendinitis, given that he now is the band for all intents and purposes. Now, he never truly left, continuing to write their lyrics, set in his dark fantasy world of Blashyrkh, and he often served as their manager, but he didn't return as a playing musician until 2013 after having surgery to address his tendinitis. Fellow founding member Abbath left in 2015 during one legal battle and long term drummer Horgh left in 2022 during another, so it is now Demonaz only, on guitars and vocals, with a couple of session musicians on bass and drums.

It's been a while since I've listened to Immortal, even though this is their tenth album. Initially, it's not far off what I remember from the back in the day. The title track opens up fast and furious, the sound almost replicating the cover. The blastbeats of Kevin Kvåle are the flurry of snow rising up from the ground and no doubt the avalanche that's prompting it. The guitars of Demonaz are the birds, hurtling towards at us at a rate of knots in an attempt to outrun the beat. It's his vocals that take the fore, dominating the scene as much as the horribly betoothed vision in the mountains.

It's such a dominant vocal that we almost imagine him in costume, maybe wearing the mask from the cover, to spit out his lyrics from. They're harsh vocals, of course, and spat out with venom, but they're also well intonated so that we can understand words without even trying and can follow it all if we care enough to focus that hard. I like his voice a great deal and it's far better than a vocal from a guitarist only taking over after a quarter of a century because the band's long term singer had left might suggest. His first lead vocal was on 2018's Northern Chaos Gods, but I haven't heard that so this is my introduction to it. It's mature and it defines this album more than anything else.

Thunders of Darkness follows on from War Against All, so we might be excused for taking this to be a fast and furious black metal album, as we might expect from Immortal. However, Wargod has no intention of following in their footsteps and, while Kvåle's double bass drumming continues to play a part, it's more notable when it shows up from this point on than when it doesn't. Demonaz stays with his tortured black metal voice, but the music shifts more into the heavy metal that we heard hints of earlier in phrasing and riffage. Sure, it speeds up halfway through, but it still feels like it's a lively NWOBHM song, merely with an occasional harsh voice and double bass drumming.

And that mindset continues. I've reviewed hard and heavy albums lately that are faster than some of this. Return to Cold is another track phrased as heavy metal with black metal overlays, but it has the structure and swells of a power metal song. And, as harsh as Demonaz's voice is, clearly aimed to be bleak and resonant to play into his icy fantasy world setting, it shifts in its effect. Much of the time it's a clearer and more enunciated take on the early Quorthon template that pretty much all black metal singers follow, but sometimes, starting on the title track's chorus, he comes across as a rough thrash metal singer in the vein of Mille Petrozza.

And so this is occasionally exactly the black metal we expect from Immortal, given that Demonaz's ultra-fast guitarwork is one of the pillars of the genre, but it's often more proto-extreme metal, a look back at where the genre came from, not merely the pioneers like Venom, Bathory and Celtic Frost, but the bands whose music they were absorbing and spitting out in a more extreme form. It works for me, because I have broad tastes in metal, but it feels cleaner than it should for someone as pivotal to the Norwegian black metal scene, as if all this introspection has forgotten how filthy Venom used to be.

And there sparks more irony, because black metal grew up in Norway, even if it was born elsewhere, and the purists still argue about how bands should retain crappy production as an inherent component of the genre's sound. While the guitar and bass are surprisingly far behind the vocals and drums in the mix, this is absolutely not crappy production. This is very clean production and it makes this an easy album to listen to. It's never going to be cuddly with Demonaz's voice as harsh as it is, but it's fair to say that, along with the tempo shifts, it helps to push this away from black metal and into a far more commercial heavy metal sound, which is all the more obvious when he chooses not to sing on a track like Nordlandihr. I wonder where he's going to take it from here.

Crown Lands - Fearless (2023)

Country: Canada
Style: Hard/Progressive Rock
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 31 Mar 2023
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Here's a tasty album from a band I've only just heard about. They're Crown Lands, from Oshawa in Ontario, Canada, and there are only two of them. As I understand it, Cody Bowles is both the lead vocalist and the drummer, while Kevin Comeau handles everything else. I hate highlighting gender and ethnicity because the music should always matter most, but they highlight it themselves and I guess their non-traditional background for rock music fits my goal of deliberately aiming to review bands who aren't the usual four white dudes from London or New York, so I'll point out that Bowles is Two-Spirited Mi'kmaq and Comeau is Jewish.

However, I'm not hearing either of those backgrounds in the music, except for a few moments here and there that seem Native American influenced, like the flute section on the opening track, so I'll move on. What I heard immediately and emphatically is seventies Rush, back when they wrote epic science fiction-inspired tracks with vast power chords and highly progressive sections that became rock opera anthems. I also heard Bowles's high pitched vocals, which aren't quite as clean as Geddy Lee's but do much the same job.

In short, I heard 2112 and that impression was promptly doubled because the album opens with an eighteen minute epic, Starlifter: Fearless Pt. II, a strange choice not only because of its length but because Context: Fearless Pt. I arrives four tracks later, suggesting that I'm listening out of order. Like 2112, it's broken into easily delineated movements, potentially nine of them, two of which are instrumental, so it feels like different songs combining to tell a story.

It's also an obvious highlight, as indeed is the closer, Citadel, which may well be the most effortless classic here. That feels like an old faithful even on the first listen, as if we'd grown up listening to it but a few decades have passed since our last time through and hauling it out again reminds us how good it was. There's some of that feeling on the opener too, but less so; it's mostly in the rhythmic power chords that build sections. It's such a rich track, though, that it's easy to fall into it. I wonder if it'll be remembered in future years for a couple of passages more than the entire thing but I'm thinking not.

In between those two killer bookends are a half dozen other tracks that do sit in their shadow, but are still good nonetheless. Dreamer of the Dawn has the tough task of following Starlifter and it's fair to say that it suffers from that position but also manages to distinguish itself with a different flow. Similarly, Reflections gets lost in between Context: Fearless Pt. I, which is decent but not up to the high standards of its second part, and Penny, which is impossible to miss. Everything else on offer is some sort of hard/progressive rock hybrid, but this is a solo acoustic guitar interlude, with more time and complexity than we might expect. It's more like something off a John Fahey album than a Rush one, but it's gorgeous, lush and evocative.

Of these other songs, I'd call out The Shadow and Lady of the Lake, along with Penny, as highlights. The former is an awkward fit because Bowles doesn't aim quite as hard for a high pitch, so ends up changing the feel of the song. He reaches Geddy Lee's heights at moments, so Rush are never far away, but the register he uses for much of the song brings him down to a sort of Fastway vibe, very different indeed. The phrasing on Lady of the Lake, on the other hand, makes him often sound like Ozzy attempting to sing Geddy, albeit without a Birmingham accent. Bowles remains clear too.

All in all, this is a good album, maybe a great album, but there's a better one in them, I think. This is their second, after a self-titled debut in 2020, which I completely failed to notice, and I'm looking forward to their third and, if Rush are going to be the abiding template, their fourth, because that was when 2112 showed up. If we're comparing, then this would be their Fly by Night and, that's not the worst place to be. This band deserve to be huge. Let's see if they make it.

Alcatrazz - Take No Prisoners (2023)

Country: USA
Style: Heavy Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 19 May 2023
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Talking of Alcatrazz, who I namechecked in my Arjen Lucassen's Supersonic Revolution review, here they are with a new album a lot sooner than I expected, given their historic habit of splitting up all the time and not putting out albums. However, I did mention in my review of V only two years ago that the latest incarnation, the fourth, seems to be determined to break that habit. V followed its predecessor by only a year and here's number three shortly thereafter. They were formed in 1983 and they've put out as many albums in the past four years as their first thirty-six.

What's more, it's good stuff, even if recognisable vocalist Graham Bonnet is in the other Alcatrazz, the one that isn't putting out albums. The line-up is mostly the same here as last time, with only a single change behind the drumkit, Larry Paterson replacing Mark Benquechea. Jimmy Waldo and Gary Shea are founder members on keyboards and bass respectively. Joe Stump has been there on guitar since the band reformed in 2019, while Doogie White, who's sung for a crazy number of the same bands as Bonnet, joined a year later. They seem cohesive enough to last.

And I hope they do. This is British hard rock with a veneer of American heavy metal over the top, a vehicle built out of parts from Rainbow songs with a flash chassis that's all Alcatrazz shred. There are exceptions here, like the very catchy Don't Get Mad... Get Even, which is so close to Saxon that I could have believed that White took a breather and let Biff Byford step in. Certainly, that's their NWOBHM compatriots Girlschool on backing vocals during the choruses. There's not a lot on this one that's recognisably American.

I mentioned on my review of V that I'm a sucker for anything built on the Rainbow sound and that holds true here. There's not a lot of originality here but the recognisable stuff is all good and the sheer energy of this band carries them through anyway. They mix up the pace rather a lot, but it's the faster paced songs that work the best for me. Little Viper storms out of the gate to kick things off and Bring on the Rock, excuse me, Bring on the Rawk, closes out in even more emphatic style. They're never quite speed metal, but their particular brand of metallic hard rock definitely thinks about it on occasion.

The other fast song is Alcatrazz and naming a song after your band on your sixth album requires a serious level of emphasis. It really ought to be a showstopper and, while it doesn't quite reach that level, it does give it a major try, with that Rainbow sweep again but a much faster tempo that just refuses to quit. I should add that it isn't just the pace that works for me on these songs. Stump is a less technical guitarist than Yngwie Malmsteen and he's less quirky than Steve Vai, but he does fill their footsteps anyway with the workouts he has on these songs, especially Bring on the Rawk and, oddly, Strangers.

I say oddly because Strangers is absolutely not a stormer like those up tempo numbers. It's a real stalker of a song with a Dio-esque grandeur to it, mostly solo era but with Rainbow moments too. While White relishes his Ronnie James impersonation, Stump channels Randy Rhoads for his rapid fire solo. Has he been listening to Mr. Crowley lately? Then again, he follows a similar flourish by a dynamic Waldo on keyboards. The only catch to this one is the fade out, which disappoints. I don't buy that they couldn't find a natural conclusion for it. Bring on the Rawk, for example, has not an inch of doubt how to end and does so magnificently. Then again, it's the album closer.

There's a lot of good here, even if it's never going to win an award for originality. The one moment it actually hints at going on there, on a clearly progressive intro to Salute the Colours, with its wild guitar and keyboards, it decides it's not remotely comfortable doing that and settles into a rather routine plodder of a song. Like last time, nothing lets the side down, though some songs fade on a second or third listen, leaving the highlights to continue to shine in their stead. The only song that ramped up on further times through is Gates of Destiny, which seeps into the soul. It's so Rainbow that it even sounds like a Rainbow song title, but there's a little Iron Maiden gallup in there too.

So hey, this is a good match to V, easily worthy of another 7/10 from me. Its highs are just as high and its lows are similarly more like B-side candidates than filler. None of them are bad, even Holy Roller (Love's Temple), which is easily the softest song here, regardless of how emphatic its riff is. What are the odds of a fourth modern day Alcatrazz album within the next couple of years before Bonnet decides to actually release an albumwith his version of the band? Pretty high, I think, and I'm looking forward to it already.

Arjen Lucassen's Supersonic Revolution - Golden Age of Music (2023)

Country: The Netherlands
Style: Hard Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 19 May 2023
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It's impossible to listen to this without noticing the nostalgia that infuses it. Arjen Lucassen, if you don't recognise the name, is a Dutch multi-instrumentalist who was born in 1960 and is best known for his long running progressive metal project Ayreon, a revolving door through which many of the greatest names in the genre have wandered. This is his first album as Supersonic Revolution and it looks very specifically back to the seventies, both in the sense of the musical styles of the time and how he personally interacted with it as a teenager.

SR Prelude sets that tone with an instrumental minute and a half that reminds of Deep Purple, Yes and ELP. The Glamattack emphasises Purple but clearly adds Rainbow to the mix and further songs trawl in more influences as needed. Odyssey is lighter and spacier and while it doesn't sound like a Hawkwind song, they can't be ignored. They Took Us by Storm is heavier, placing us in Black Sabbath territory. Fight of the Century often feels like a musical number and, with Jesus Christ Superstar in the lyrics of an earlier song, it's easy to see that approach here.

Almost everything is the seventies, by design, including a very notable seventies organ sound that mostly reminds of Jon Lord's work in Purple but occasionally Ken Hensley's time in Uriah Heep, as on The Rise of the Starman. However, there are glimpses of the eighties that followed, not least in the guitar flourishes of Timo Somers, which sound much more like Yngwie Malmsteen than Ritchie Blackmore. It's there in the voice of Jaycee Cuijpers too, who's halfway between Ronnie James Dio and Graham Bonnet, emphasising one over the other as needed.

The lyrics focus on the seventies too, most obviously in Golden Age of Music, which namechecks an impressive list of names, or at least hints at them. I'm a decade younger than Lucassen but I found rock and metal through the Friday Rock Show on which Tommy introduced me to all of it at once, so I was hearing the Purple Mark II classics at the same time that they got back together for Perfect Strangers, Rainbow from both eras at the same time as Dio and Alcatrazz, the British Invasion and the NWOBHM at exactly the same time. Steely Dan and Venom were both just rock bands to me.

But Lucassen was a decade earlier, so he had less of that to absorb at once, whenever he found the genre, and could focus more on just the new stuff the seventies brought, which started with glam and prog rock and moved on from there. Golden Age of Music explicitly references Radio Caroline and Farrah Fawcett, along with songs or albums by Rainbow, Pink Floyd, Deep Purple, Jesus Christ Superstar, Alice Cooper and Thin Lizzy. Those are easy references to catch (though I didn't get the "shorts by JCB" line), but other songs are more opaque, maybe because they're hybrids. I thought The Rise of the Starman would be about David Bowie, but it seems more Marc Bolan.

The most telling lyrics arrive in the closer, Came to Mock, Stayed to Rock, in which Lucassen speaks to gatekeeping. He's a rocker, the narrator of this song, who doesn't want anyone to change that, but the ubiquitous they drag him to an Abba show and an opera, both of which he thoroughly digs, against his expectations. However, it ends with suggestions that there's pressure on him to think of those as guilty pleasures and that it's his turn. Can he drag you to one of his shows or are you a little too closed minded for that experience, you Abba and opera fans? He might play this, with its sassy funky intro.

I liked this album from the outset because I love that seventies organ sound and I especially love it when it shows up with twenty-first century production technology. Everything's worth listening to, even if you like Abba and opera, but there are clear standouts. Golden Age of Music is the obvious one, because it's the most effective earworm I've heard in months. I woke up this morning to "This is Radio Caroline. Evening all. Hope you're doing fine" playing inside my skull. I'd call out the other golden song, Golden Boy, too. It's more subtle but it nails its groove, feeling oddly like a Yes track played by Purple. I can't not mention They Took Us by Storm too, which is Sabbath heavy but with a quintessential Purple organ intro, even if it's more Perfect Strangers than Machine Head.

What matters on an album this tailored to nostalgia though is connecting with listeners who share that mindset. I'm just a little too young for that but it worked anyway. If you were born in 1960 and grew up listening to rock music, I'd be interested in how close this comes to taking you back there.

Sirenia - 1977 (2023)

Country: Norway
Style: Symphonic Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 26 May 2023
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Another band whose most recent album came out a couple of years ago, Sirenia's highlighted that their sound had changed considerably since their early years. This follows suit, a firm underline to their current musical approach. What that means for old school fans is that there isn't as much of a gothic aspect to their sound as there used to be, though it isn't gone entirely, and the vocals of founder Morten Veland are mostly gone, showing up on the odd song here and there to serve as a contrast and to pique our memories.

Mostly, this is symphonic metal to showcase the voice of Emmanuelle Zoldan, who sounds excellent but, as with the previous album, doesn't attempt to show off. The songwriting is pretty consistent, these songs generally kicking in with electronica that's characterful and highly versatile but often more in a pop vein than rock, let alone metal. Then the guitars add crunch with a wistful eye firmly on the gothic metal they used to play, as if they're nostalgic but not so much to truly go back there. The beat is up tempo and lively rather than fast, but it speeds up at points for emphasis. And then Zoldan's vocals arrive to take the song where she will.

It's the electronica and the beat that fundamentally drives this album, because Veland trawled in an eighties pop aesthetic to flavour the band's sound that's highlighted by his very unusual choice of cover to close the album. It's Twist in My Sobriety, Tanita Tikaram's biggest hit from 1988, which features a moodiness to her vocal but a perkiness to the beat. That translates well here into a pop metal song, with the moodiness in the gothic crunch and the perkiness still there in the beat. And, really, while this cover closes the album, it could have started it as a mission statement. Instead it wraps up proceedings as a nod to the degree to which everything could have gone.

It's easy to see where this could have gone horribly wrong. Pop metal is a dangerous territory, the two approaches very different and needing to contrast each other well to work in collaboration. It may be the electronic decoration that saves it, because Veland infuses it with enough invention to keep the songs from fading into pop mediocrity. Without it, they might seem enough of a likeness to lose us. With it, the songs are able to delineate themselves and shine on their own.

If you're worried by this pop metal approach, I'd suggest that you listen to Twist in My Sobriety, to see where Veland is coming from this time out, then check out some highlights to see if this works for you. I like the opener Deadlight mostly for its subtle touches, so Wintry Heart may be a better choice as a sample; it has a real bounce to it and a neatly catchy melody. Nomadic is a strong track right after it, kicking off with violin and Jew's harp but then launching into a tastefully aggressive riff. Timeless Desolation features the most elegant melodies, but A Thousand Scars has grandeur to it, with Zoldan getting operatic in its second half, and that returns on Delirium, which is clearly the heaviest song here.

And talking of heavy, while this is still symphonic metal, it's so driven by a pop mindset that it gets easy to forget. Nomadic has an edge but Fading to the Deepest Black is the first song that believes that it's truly metal. Michael Brush generates a much faster beat early on and the guitars go past their standard crunch mode, only to recede for the more elegant verses, even if the keyboards are a constant reminder that this is a darker song. Veland steps up to the mike on this one but keeps it clean for now. He returns and gets harsh for the only time on Delirium, with Zoldan adding serious weight to her voice during her operatic sections.

I like this, even though the proliferation of pop melodies and thinking ought to put me off. There's a song here, The Setting Darkness, that kicks off just like Abba and never really leaves that even as the crunch hits. I don't like it as much as Riddles, Ruins & Revelations, which got an 8/10 from me in 2021, but I do like it. It feels odd to be giving it a 7/10 right after doing the same on Joel Hoekstra's 13, because I like this a heck of a lot more, but that speaks only to how this one connects with me a lot more effectively, not to any difference in quality. I wonder how you'll compare them.

Joel Hoekstra's 13 - Crash of Life (2023)

Country: USA
Style: Hard and Heavy
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 16 Jun 2023
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I've listened to this album a few times now and it still hasn't got its talons into me. It's decent stuff without question and all the expected elements are here. Joel Hoekstra's guitarwork is clean and apparently effortless, however technical he's getting on a particular solo. Girish Pradhan's vocals, replacing Russell Allen's as the only change in line-up since 2021's Running Games, mix his similarly clean melodies with a little grit in ways we recognise from his day job in Girish and the Chronicles.

And the band behind them is entirely populated with insanely talented and experienced legends: Tony Franklin on bass, Vinny Appice on drums and Derek Sherinian on keyboards. If you don't know these names, then pop over to Wikipedia and read about them. You've certainly heard their work. Between them, they've played for pretty much everyone from Black Sabbath to Dream Theater. It seems hard to imagine a better backing line-up and they do everything expected of them with such tight integration that it's hard to not listen to the musicianship rather than the songs.

But this still doesn't grab me the way it should and I'm not seeing why. The riffs are there and the solos are very much there, enough that I'm still enjoying every track on a fourth or fifth listen. The hooks are there too, maybe not quite as prominently as last time, but that just means that they're in a more perfect balance with the riffs. On paper, it seems like it ought to play a little better than Running Games, but it doesn't, at least not for me, and why probably comes down to that je ne sais quoi that critics are supposed to explain.

I think part of it may be that every song impresses while we're listening to it, but none of them are still there in mind when we wrap up after all twelve of them. These sound like great hooks but they aren't sticking in my brain, still playing from memory while I'm wandering down the hallway to the bathroom or when I'm waking up in the morning, already tapping my toes. They're impressing now coming out of my speakers and promptly vanishing again until the next time around.

Maybe I'm subconsciously rebelling against how slick it all feels. Everything is seamlessly done but it's so seamlessly done that it feels like these folk aren't even trying. Maybe they aren't, because they're all that damn good, but I want it to feel like they are, like they're not just showing up to an easy session gig, that they're passionate about this music and they're pouring the soul into it. That isn't something I'm getting, even from Pradhan who's easily the most obvious source of passion. It all feels too textbook, too perfectly generated to elicit the desired response from a listener.

The question has to be how much that matters. Most of the rock bands on the planet would sell all their combined testicles to sound as good as these musicians do, but I can't pick a favourite song to highlight. Maybe Far Too Deep has a little more bite to its riffs. Maybe Pradhan gets a little more passion into Over You, which, with Through the Night, is as close as this album gets to a ballad. Maybe I Would Cry for Love is a little more able to find an old school Deep Purple steamroller vibe in the second half, Sherinian's solo shifting perfectly into Hoekstra's. Maybe there's a funkier groove on Find a Way.

Don't get me wrong. This is easily a 7/10 album. It does what Running Games did, with a new singer who sounds great with the rest of the band, maybe not quite as well but pretty close. The die hard fans ought to lap it up. Technically, of course, it's impeccable. It just isn't working for me and I have to stop listening to it again and again in the hope that it will suddenly click. It's got to the point I'm almost disappointed in myself for not enjoying it more and that can't be good.

Schandmaul - Knüppel aus dem Sack (2023)

Country: Germany
Style: Medieval Folk Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 10 Jun 2023
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Here's another medieval folk metal album, which means that you're already fairly presuming that this band are from Germany. They're based in Munich and the four male musicians also play in the rock band Weto, with the keyboard player from Regicide. There are two female musicians too, who add notable textures, especially given that Birgit Muggenthaler-Schmack is responsible for all the shawms and bagpipes. They both have their own side projects too.

Between them, they cover a heck of a lot of musical ground on what is their eleventh album. I have no background in their work and failed to tackle Artus, their previous album in 2019. I'm absolutely sure that they've changed their sound over time because there's far too much on offer here to see anything else. Just check out the first four songs to see how they vary their formula massively.

Knüppel aus dem Sack is initially driven by metal riffs from Martin Duckstein and a solid beat from Stefan Brunner, but then Muggenthaler-Schmack sets the tone with bagpipes and Thomas Lindner spits bars in a raspy Teutonic voice. Köningsgarde gets majestic, as the title of King's Guard might suggest, but it bounces too with a bagpipe melody very reminiscent of ELP's Touch and Go and the anthemic chorus feels like Rammstein, as if we're somehow bringing prog rock and NDH together at a Renaissance Festival, especially once she shifts to shawm.

Das Gerücht is extra-playful, as if its depiction of The Court often focuses on a jester whom Lindner is more than happy to bring to life, down to fingersnaps and theatrical tease. We can just tell that there's a gleam in his eye when he's singing this one. When it's quiet, it plays with us entirely like Gogol Bordello do. When it ramps up, Saskia Forkert makes her violin prominent and it barrels on with folk energy. Der Pfeifer, or The Piper, continues in that vein but with a focus on melodies from a recorder alongside audience participation, whether hand clapping or dancing.

The rest of the songs here tend to play in one of those approaches, most frequently folk metal that often drops into rock. As that might suggest, it's relatively light, always focused on melodies from Lindner's clean voice and Muggenthaler-Schmack's bagpipes without any intention of bringing in a harsh voice or a crunchy back end. The traditional instruments, not just the bagpipes, but also the accordion Lindner plays when not strumming an acoustic guitar and the violin and hurdy-gurdy of Forkert, aren't there to sneak in a spotlight moment but to shape the songs throughout.

That's clearest when they drop out of metal entirely, such as on Der Quacksalber, which is all lively drums, fingerpicked guitar as a backdrop and a tender fiddle as a solo instrument. It's easy to see Lindner sat on a tall stool in a pub singing this one while we all either twirl our partners about the room or stand there and tap our feet. The same goes for Luft und Liebe after it, which kicks off as a calliope song only to liven up and then quiet down with Matthias Richter's bass replacing those guitars and a flute replacing the violin. This one shifts back up into the folk metal approach when it wants though, because that's never far away.

It's hard not to like this immediately and emphatically. There's technical wizardry going on and all these musicians are very capable indeed, but at heart it's just music to dance to, as medieval music tended to be, and that's the only criterion it knows it wants to nail. That lighter mindset is where it may divide people, because most folk metal, as if I might dare to generalise that most versatile of genrese, has far more crunch than this. There's a personal nature to this sound, as if the studio is unnatural territory to them and they would much rather just play this music to half a dozen of us as we walk down a grassy road. And that's fine. I appreciate that mindset, but I still feel like I want a little more crunch.

Weapon UK - New Clear Power (2023)

Country: UK
Style: Heavy Metal
Rating: 9/10
Release Date: 19 May 2023
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I remember the name of Weapon UK from back in the day more than I remember their music. Part of that is because they were just before my time, Tommy playing Weapon on the Friday Rock Show in 1980 four years before I found it 1984. Part of it is because they'd already split up by then, with a brief reformation in 1984 after a two year break not lasting. Most of it, though, is that, like many NWOBHM bands, they only released a single back in the day and the albums came much later, with their debut, after renaming from Weapon to Weapon UK because of a bogus legal threat. This is a third for them and it sounds very tasty indeed.

Now, it took me a moment. Even after the intro, Drumbeats of War begins far less vigorously than I was expecting. Danny Hynes sounds good at the mike, but he lags behind the guitars in emphasis and his vocal feels a little too comfortable for something with that much punch behind him. On the opener, he channels Phil Lynott, while Oscar Bromvall is going for more of a Tank sound on guitar, a few escalations into something more thrashy. And I kept thinking about this as the album ran on. Even half a dozen times through, it often felt odd that Hynes wasn't giving it more energy.

However, my conclusion was that he really doesn't need to. He has a smooth voice and he knows it and he nails the hooks here, so much so that we're absolutely glued to what he's doing, even if he doesn't have to command us to pay attention. And that conclusion underpins why this is such a seriously good album. This band, with Hynes leading the way, are so confident in these songs that they know they only have to put them in front of our ears and we'll be on board. A minute into Drumbeats of War, I wasn't convinced. Two minutes in and it was a favourite track that felt like an old friend.

Crucially, the same goes for most of the rest of the songs on this album. Sure, Drumbeats of War is a highlight, but so's Take It or Leave It and so's Electric Power. In for the Kill may be the best track here. The second half took a little longer to grab me but grab me it did and now Remote Control is up there too and Shoot You Down and Riding with the Angels. The entire album is a highlight! Well almost. I'm not as fond of the ballad, Live for Today, but it's done very well and I do love the guitar solo that introduces a welcome ramp up in the second half.

Talking of guitars, they're the work of Oscar Bromvall, presumably the same Oscar Bromvall who I am always impressed by on Fans of the Dark albums. I'm just as impressed here too, because he's a riff creation machine, setting them down one after another as if he can just pluck them out of the air at will. There may not be a single killer riff here but every single riff is excellent and they keep on coming. Similarly, there may not be a single killer hook but Hynes keeps them coming thick and fast and every one of them works. There are eight tracks here and maybe eight or nine are going to have to duke it out for which will be playing in my head when I wake up in the morning.

The combined effect is kind of like a traditional NWOBHM band jamming with an arena rock band. Bromvall delivers riffs that remind of Tank at their finest, with elements of Diamond Head and an odd nod to AC/DC, as on Remote Control. Tony Forsythe and Andreas Westerlund do nothing flash but firm up everything Bromvall does so well that we start to take them for granted. Hynes adds a sense of melody that screams of huge stadiums, because it's the verses as much as the choruses. I don't think Journey don't have this many hooks.

Right now, I'm hoping that mentioning Diamond Head is appropriate not only because of how they inform the guitars here, but because, after a long but troubled existence, they've found a notably stable period matching a killer guitarist with an excellent vocalist who can keep up with him. It's a little early to suggest this, but I truly think that the musical partnership of Bromvall and Hynes is just as promising. It took Weapon UK thirty-four years to release their debut album and only half this line-up was on its predecessor. If they can keep it together to knock out another album or two like this with the same line-up, they could be huge.

And from immediately thinking this was a 7/10 album, I soon upped that to an 8/10 and, goddamn it but I've only given out two 9/10s over six months but this will be my second in two days.

Now, why do they have a Wikipedia page in German but not English? Inquiring minds want to know.