Cirkus - Page 12 (On the Right) (2021)

Country: UK
Style: Progressive Rock
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 30 Apr 2021
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Cirkus have been making music for a long time but they're hardly prolific. Actually, let's replace Cirkus with their keyboardist Derek Miller, because it's he who has been keeping their name alive across the decades. Their debut album, One, came out in 1974 and has been acclaimed as one of the best albums you've never heard, not least because only a thousand copies were pressed. They split up in the early eighties, but Miller came back with Two: The Global Cut in 1994 and III: Pantomyme in 1998, the latter of which brought back some of the older members.

Miller seems to be getting prolific at last, releasing IV: The Blue Star in 2017, V: Trapeze in 2020 and, a year later, Page 12 on the Right, which oddly isn't prefixed by VI but is still a new studio album. Unlike the Axewitch album, which is rooted in the band's original era of the eighties, this is an odd mixture of the old and the new, merging the more commercial King Crimson sound of the seventies with an up to date Steven Wilson sort of contemporary sound. It's inventive, it's vibrant and I like it a lot.

I'll run through the tracks in order, because they're highly variable in approach and that ought to be a good way to highlight just how much there is here.

The opening title track is an instrumental that moves from birds and flutes to a driving rock beat with a strong overlay of keyboards and guitars. It has quite a build to it. Angel brings in vocals and a jazzier style, complete with saxophone, that reminds of Steely Dan. Good News Week is more contemporary, introducing samples, effects, loops and a rumbling bass from Brian Morton. Oddly, it also adds a punk attitude too during the verses that's neatly countered by laid back pop electronica in between them. The result is lively and playful, two adjectives that very much apply to this album as a whole.

Alive features acoustic guitar over more of those birds until it ramps up. It ends with vocal harmonies. I'm not seeing any of these songs, most of which are short, in the three to five minute range, broken down into movements, but many of them build that way.

Back & Fourth is quite the trip, literally. Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time, we're told, and what he gets up to is explored in another playful song, featuring neat moments of brass and pipe organ, steam effects and an unusual beat that reminds very much of clockwork. I would not call Cirkus a steampunk band in the slightest but this song is as truly a steampunk song as anything I've heard from the genre.

I'm with You and One More Day are almost easy listening prog. They're deceptively soft, smooth and surface, but there are depths here if you choose to dive. And, while those two don't explicitly invite us to dive, The Lure of Santa Monica absolutely does. It's a quirky and teasing piece, led by vocalist Dave Ramshaw, who invites us to enter a whole new world. This new world turns out to be hypnotic and very contemporary in the Steven Wilson style. This is the album's epic, running well over nine minutes and it doesn't stop being inventive for a second. The titular lure seems to be a rabbit hole like the one we know well from Alice in Wonderland. I never realised Santa Monica had these sort of secrets.

That leaves So It Goes, which has a troubadour flavour to it, and Forever Tonight, which is a heartfelt and folky piece, a personal and touching way to wrap up the album.

All in all, it's a wonderful album, an easy 8/10 for me. There's so much great progressive rock coming out of the UK right now that I could almost call it a renaissance. This one doesn't trawl the usual prog influences: you're not going to find much Yes here or Genesis either, however quirky this gets There's some King Crimson for sure and some Moody Blues and a little Alan Parsons, but countered by a style so contemporary that I'm sure I'll miss the appropriate reference points. Steven Wilson is the obvious one and if you ever thought you wanted to hear him mixed with the Moody Blues, this is emphatically your album.

Axewitch - Out of the Ashes into the Fire (2021)

Country: Sweden
Style: Heavy Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 30 Apr 2021
Sites: Facebook | Metal Archives | Official Website

For a change, here's one of those bands who have emerged after a long break with new material that I don't remember from back in the day. Then again, before the advent of the internet and before the reach of a European magazine like Metal Hammer expanded to the UK, it was tough for bands outside "traditional countries" to get in front of listeners, even if they sang in English. Tommy Vance did play Axewitch on the Friday Rock Show but a few months before I discovered it (and rock music). So I guess I have to find out about them in 2021!

Long story short, it looks like members of a couple of bands, Haze and Black Stone, got together in the late seventies to form a new band, Hazy. After a few years, that grew into Axewitch, a better name for the new decade and, based on the sound here, they fit the style of the NWOBHM era well, rooted in a very seventies hard rock sound but with a little more punk aggressiveness. Their debut album was The Lord of Flies in 1983 and they released another couple over the next two years, before splitting up in 1987. Excepting a brief blip in 1991, they stayed gone until a 25th anniversary reunion show sparked a reunion in 2017. This is their first album since and only bass player Björn Hernborg wasn't part of the original Axewitch, having joined in 2012.

They haven't updated their sound to add anything contemporary, which means that they sound exactly like the sort of band who would have recorded a Friday Rock Show session in the mid eighties. They're good at what they do but what they do isn't particularly original, so they're rather doomed to the sort of career they've had: a few reliable albums with dubious covers on an indie label; enough quality for a fanbase to build but not enough originality to get truly noticed; and then a long period split up that only returns them to the studio in their fortieth anniversary year.

There are ten new songs here, plus a couple of reworked tracks from their 1982 demo that didn't make it onto any of those older albums. They're Nightmare and Axewitch and, together with the other track on that demo that isn't revisited here, a cover of Judas Priest's Beyond the Realms of Death, it's clear who their primary influence were. Vocalist Anders Wallentoft doesn't even try for Rob Halford's high notes, but the wailing guitars on Axewitch and the general structure of both those songs is obviously taken straight from the Judas Priest textbook. Axewitch sounds like the Priest. Nightmare sounds like Priest covering Blue Öyster Cult and those two bands are still at the core of Axewitch's sound.

The Pusher opens up the album with Priest front and centre, but a slightly newer Priest, more British Steel than Sad Wings of Destiny, being less progressive and less ambitious but still built out of Priest riffs and melodies. A lot of this album comes from that particular commercial Priest era, before their later dabbling in guitar synths or speed metal. It's a great way to kick off Axewitch's first album in 36 years. I don't remember you, but welcome back!

In Pitch Black Darkness shifts back to Blue Öyster Cult, a little longer and a little more progressive but with Hernborg's bass setting the tone as much as the guitars of Magnus Jarl and Mikael Johansson. It doesn't just aim to rock, like The Pusher; it also aims to set a mood, a heavy and prowling one that has resonance. It returns for Dues to Pay, Boogie of Death and Going Down and more.

To my ears, Wallentoft's voice fits this approach better, as he doesn't have the range of a Rob Halford, or the sheer power of an Udo Dirkschneider either, on a song like Let Sleeping Dogs Lie which updates that commercial Priest sound to mid-eighties Accept, but he does have the breadth of an Eric Bloom, able to move easily from the light to the dark or the heavy, whichever contrast he's looking for. I'd bet that he could go softer to an AOR sound or harder towards power metal without any hardship at all.

I enjoyed this from the outset, but I thought that some of that was flavoured by nostalgia. I found the genre in 1984 and devoured everything I could find for much of that decade, so anything that takes me back to that magic time tends to sound better to me than it might actually be. However, after a point, I realised that I was enjoying this album on its own merits, nostalgia be damned. I'm not sure exactly where that point was, but it's in somewhere in the middle of the album. It's as if Axewitch introduced us with a Priest style song and a BÖC style song so we knew where they came from and then began to blend those styles with increasing success.

I liked the early songs, but I love Boogie of Death, Going Down and The Healer. They have those Priest riffs and BÖC moods, with little hints at Accept power and even Cinderella glam, while staying within a traditional heavy metal framework. They all move with calculated style, finding grooves and nailing them down. There's a patience in here, even when they're scooting along nicely. This was always going to be at least a 7/10 but I'm seriously thinking about upping that to an 8/10 now. Maybe after another listen.

Necronomicon - The Final Chapter (2021)

Country: Germany
Style: Thrash Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 26 Mar 2021
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If the Aqviles album felt soft, pleasant and refreshing, however deep it turned out to be, this new one from German thrash band Necronomicon is hard, in your face and uncompromising. I have to say that it's also refreshing, though, because this is thrash with the old school mentality of blistering through our brains until we're thoroughly cleaned out. They're another German thrash band I remember from back in the day, because their third album, 1988's Escalation, was everywhere in the UK at the time. I have to admit, however, that I don't believe I ever picked up its two predecessors, which is odd for me.

This is the sort of thrash I've been craving of late, full of ruthless and relentless riffs, beats and solos, but told with a strong sense of melody and told at serious pace but not without variety. It's thrash to get the blood pumping and the neck moving, even in an office chair while I work. It's not afraid of the mid tempo, but it's too busy blistering to care much about slowing down that much. Add a raspy clean voice out of the Teutonic thrash textbook and I was on board by the end of the first track.

It's good stuff from the get go that betrays its Iron Maiden influence more and more as it runs on. It's easy to hear in Purgatory, which is not a cover, I should add, though Spilling Blood sounds like it could be a cover by Kreator of something on the Somewhere in Time album, heavied up with 21st century production values. It's overt when we reach the intro to Burning the Fury, which is a little too close to Flash of the Blade, just with a different beat to back it, and that feels a little shoehorned onto the rest of the track. However, once this one ramps up to full speed, that buzzsaw guitar is just magic. I don't know how many times I turned this one up but I hope the neighbours liked it. It stops on a dime too, which is great.

There are odd problems like that overly reminiscent intro throughout, though. I understand that the German language treats certain letters differently, but, if you're going to sing in English, then a song like I am the Violence needs a V sound in its chorus, not a W. Purgatory has far too long a spoken word intro and that only serves to punctuate the album with a gap it didn't need. There are a dozen songs here, which wrap up in only just over three quarters of an hour and that's because they knuckle down to business, do their job and give way for the next blitzkrieg. Pauses like this intro don't help.

Fortunately, there's a lot of good here to balance out the little bad and then some. After that lovely shift into high gear in Burning the Fury, there's another one on the the very next track, Spilling Blood. My neck got a workout today! The soloing behind the vocals on Selling Nightmares is fantastic. A bunch of the riffs here, in songs like The Unnamed, are so bouncy that it's impossible not to move to them. The bass comes out to play often and takes our attention in a good way in songs like The Stormreaper.

And, above all, this is simply what thrash is supposed to be. A song like Me Against You really isn't the best or the most original slice of thrash ever recorded and, arguably, it's a filler track on this album, but it's still fast and it's frantic and it's furious, with a good riff and a wailing solo, and if this doesn't send the pit into a frenzy when gigs open back up, then the crowd's been dead for ten years. The Final Chapter, and I hope it isn't the final chapter for Necronomicon, may not be the best thrash album I've heard in 2021 but it's surely the furthest up my particular alley. And it came out on my fiftieth birthday! Surely this is a sign from the elder gods. I'm going to be playing this one a lot!

Aqviles - Memoria Fósil (2021)

Country: Chile
Style: Progressive Rock
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 26 Mar 2021
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | YouTube

There's so much fantastic music coming out of Europe at the moment that I could fill two slots per day from that continent alone, but I'll keep trying to cover as much territory as I can. And if could focus on a different continent, it would be South America rather than North America, because, while they have far fewer "major bands" and a much shorter history, there's a freshness in the music coming out of all the countries down there, a vibrancy and a sense of invention that really appeals to me. Throwing on a new album from somewhere in South America often serves as a palate cleanser for me, replenishing my faith in music as an art form and not just an industry.

Case in point: Aqviles, a progressive rock band from Santiago, Chile who have been around since 2004 and are on their second studio album, after 2015's El Último Hombre Bala. Their sound is fascinating to me because it feels soft and laid back even when it isn't. There's a lightness to it that I'm hearing a lot in South American albums lately, but this isn't surface music. Radio en Alerta, for instance, which is the first song proper, lasts under four minutes, but features some energetic bass work behind patient guitar, some unusual time signatures and a really cool slowdown in the second half that almost turns doomy, without ever being metal. There's a lot here, even when there doesn't seem to be.

Aqviles are a rock band, but I call them progressive rock because of all the experimentation going on in these songs. At first glance, some are soft rock and some hard rock, the overall spectrum the band goes through ranging from soft jazz rock in the Steely Dan vein to harder grooves rather reminiscent of Budgie. That's quite the range, but it's consistent in tone, even when it's flirting with other genres, like funk on Espectador de Terrors, or Spectator of Terror; pop on Astro, which is driven by a riff that almost feels like Robert Palmer levels of perky; or jazz on at least part of most of these ten songs.

I have to call out Fernando Urra first, because his bass is dynamic and so obvious that it often becomes the lead instrument. Diálogos is well named, because it's almost a dialogue between abrasive guitar and warm bass, with the vocals a third wheel. This one makes me wonder just how much the guitar of Diego Lillo is doing, because I'm starting to believe that what I initially thought were keyboards must be the guitar with a different tone. He uses quite a few, including a beautiful fluid one for overt solos like the one early in Espectador de Terrors that counters the ominous bass with its purity, or early in Surcos en la Piel, or Furrows in the Skin, which is almost pleading.

That leaves Rodrigo Pérez, who's a versatile drummer and needs to be to play along with this pair. He doesn't seem to do a lot compared to Urra and Lillo but, the more I listen to this, the more the drums start to emerge as an equal partner, not just the support behind the others. After all, he's credited on percussion as well as drums and there are points where he shifts from the latter to the former for the more ethnic sounding rhythms. He does a lot too, even though the gaps in his spotlight halfway through Astro are just as important as his beats.

I should also add that, if all the guitarwork wasn't enough, Lillo is also the vocalist, making Aqviles a trio. Maybe that's why this music breathes so much. However much these three musicians do, we can easily follow any of them when we choose. I love when I can listen to a song as a song, but then listen to it again as a vocal performance and a guitar performance and a drum performance. It's rare in the 21st century to be able to listen to a song as a bass performance, but I'm really happy that I can track Urra's contribution to this album without hardship.

Like many albums that seem light and airy at first glance but quickly highlight that there's really a lot going on, this is one to explore through multiple listens. Like many such albums, it's also tough to call out favourite tracks, because it's always growing. The bookends, Radio en Alerta and Brumidor, stood out for me first. Then Espectador de Terrors refused to be ignored. Surcos en la Piel staked its claim. Astro was obvious from moment one but it grew over multiple listens beyond that adrenaline shot of a riff. And so on and so on. Every song spread out and grew on me. And, in my book, that means that this is a real keeper.

Electric Boys - Upside Down (2021)

Country: Sweden
Style: Funk Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 30th April, 2021
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I remember Electric Boys as a funk metal band. Their genre was kind of given away by the title of their debut album, Funk-O-Metal Carpet Ride, but it was there in the songs too. It's here as well but not to a similar degree, even on funkier songs like Never Again Your Slave and The Dudes & The Dancers. This is hard rock, with as many hints towards glam as to funk. In fact, the seven minute instrumental opener, Upside Down Theme, is often a lot closer to Boston than the Dan Reed Network. It's good stuff, don't get me wrong, with some inventive riffs and lively drums, but it's not particularly funky. There's even a section that dabbles in reggae, which is actually really cool.

The vocals of Conny Bloom kick in with Super God, the second song, and from that point, I heard quite a lot of Ziggy Stardust era David Bowie, even if it starts out funky. That's Bowie in the chorus for sure and the backing vocals underline it as they often do throughout the album. When Bloom shifts into an Ian Hunter approach on She Never Turns Around, the Beatles-esque singalong behind him is phrased just like Mott the Hoople would have done it.

I think this is why I like this so much. The band shift around rather a lot here, from Bowie to the Stones to Mott, but they do it consistently across the line-up. When Bloom goes for a Mick Jagger approach on Tumblin' Dominoes (as if the title didn't give that away anyway), the music is ahead of him, even if guitarist Martin Thomander often leads the band into more of a Hanoi Rocks cover of the Stones than a straight cover. This isn't stripped down like Tumblin' Dice; it's well crafted in the studio with layers of vocals and some neat guitar effects.

Now, this is heavier than any of those bands got and Bloom never attempts any accents, but it's fair to say that it looks back musically a lot further than I expected, with much of that in the vocal phrasing of Bloom that's recognisably that of the singers I've already mentioned and sometimes recognisably an Iggy Pop approach, especially on Interstellafella, where the snarl that was present on the more Mick Jagger songs comes out full force. However, he doesn't stay there. There's still some '80s funk metal, with its chanting and it's near rap, and the band shifts between the two eras like gears.

The funk is most obvious in the rhythm section, because when Bloom does choose to take that road on songs like Never Again Your Slave, Andy Christell's bass comes utterly to life, like a dog when you open a bag of treats, and Niklas Sigevall perks up too. Both of them are clearly capable musicians and they go wherever any of the songs want to go, but they're clearly more vibrant on Never Again Your Slave than on softer songs like She Never Turns Around that give more opportunities to Thomander for his guitar solo and to the na na na backing vocalists.

And all this leaves me torn.

As is becoming a trend, I remember the Electric Boys in their early years, from Funk-O-Metal Carpet Ride and Groovus Maximus in the late eighties and early nineties. I wasn't the biggest funk metal fan in the world, but they made good music and I liked their style. This does go there, on She Never Turns Around and Globestrutter, but mostly I think an old school Electric Boys fan might find it far too hard rock, with too much glam and without anywhere near enough funk.

However, someone open to a change in that approach ought to dig this. That funk is still there and it's done well, but the songs that play glammier or punkier or simply more rock 'n' roll are done well too. I dug songs like The Dudes & The Dancers, which runs on a mildly funky bass line and aims for talkative verses but returns to the Mott approach for another singalong chorus. It doesn't hurt that there's an inventive instrumental midsection that's almost prog jazz. It may not be funk-o-metal, but it's a damn good song. And this is a pretty good album too.

Devastating Light - I Have Already Failed You (2021)

Country: Finland
Style: Doom/Sludge Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 9 Jan 2021
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Metal Archives

This EP is a little older than I would usually review in May, given that it went up on Bandcamp back in January, but it's getting released in traditional form around the world and it's still a 2021 release so I'm up for it, especially as it was sent to me for review. Thanks to Teemu Toikka for sending it over, but then he does everything else on this album too, so publicity is just one more hat for him at this point. He wrote it, played every instrument on it, mixed it, mastered it and probably swept the studio floor and switched off the lights at the end of the day too.

If this is a Teemu Toikka brain dump, it suggests that life can be pretty depressing way up there in the frozen wastes of Tampere, Finland. Hey, I'm in Phoenix, Arizona, often described as the boiler room of Hell; even the sunny Mediterranean seems like frozen wastes to me nowadays. However, I was born in the UK and grew up in Yorkshire, twenty degrees of latitude further north, so I remember days where I never saw the sun. Get up in darkness, go to work in darkness, go home in darkness and go to sleep in darkness. Rinse, repeat until spring shows up. Tampere is eight more degrees north, even if it's in the south of Finland.

The concept behind the name of Devastating Light aims to capture that feeling, because Teemu is of the mindset that, while the darkness of winter is depressing, when spring arrives with the sun in tow, somehow the light is more depressing still. And I can grok that. Right now, I dread the moments when I have to open the front door because there's a burning ball of fire in the sky that wants to kill me. The light here really is devastating. Air conditioning FTW.

Any music built on this sort of idea and with a title like I Have Already Failed You is going to be acutely depressing and that tends to means achingly heavy and that's exactly what this is. This EP runs for 28 minutes, so only a long breath shorter than Reign in Blood. That's generous for an EP, even if it's taken up by one song in three parts, but the journey Toikka takes us on, courtesy of the train that brings us the initial part and takes away the final one, never gets overwhelming. It's abidingly heavy and his voice is a shriek into the void, but I enjoyed riding this melancholy.

Reading the lyrics, this seems to be an incessant dive into the deepest depression, because it reads in many ways like a suicide note, full of "crushing emptiness", "self hatred" and "no hope". "I can't help myself," Toikka tells us in Part Two, "I think no one can. The dark consumes me. The light destroys me. No sense in being." It's freeform suicide poetry and it's shrieked in an almost black metal style under the music, as if it feels unworthy to take the lead.

However, the music tells a different story to me. To my mind, there's isolating depression, which is not easy to listen to because it's inherently built on rejection, and there's welcoming depression, which is far more accessible and that's what I'm getting from this. It makes me feel like Toikka isn't screaming for help, whatever those lyrics might suggest; he's exploring his personal darkness through creativity so we can join him down there and share the weight of all this. In my darkest hours, I turn to Leonard Cohen and Joy Division for that reason because they're welcoming depression. Now I know I can turn to Devastating Light too.

This song, because there really is only one neatly bookended piece here, is broken up into three long parts, two in the eight minute range and the third over eleven. They're slow and patient, as befits the doom metal genre that I'd place this in first, but there's a recurring tone that brings sludge into play, as does the vocal because sludge metal really doesn't seem to like clean vocals. However, there are a lot of dynamics going on, presumably to show us that depression isn't a single moment, it's a ride and some moments are darker than others. I particularly like Part Three for this, because the weight lifts for some glorious sections before reasserting itself.

Thanks for this, Teemu. You haven't failed anyone here. Like the darkness of winter, I didn't want this to end.

Artillery - X (2021)

Country: Denmark
Style: Thrash Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 7 May 2021
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | Metal Archives | Twitter | Wikipedia | YouTube

It was Valentines Day in 1986 and, just like every other Friday evening during that era of my life, I was taping the Friday Rock Show on BBC Radio 1. Tommy Vance started out well with a classic by Saxon and a good new one from Ozzy and then he hit me with Time Has Come, taken from the Artillery debut on Neat Records, Fear of Tomorrow. The rest of the show was good, but I was blown away by the Artillery song and I remember raving to my mother, who didn't give a monkey's about rock or metal, about this fantastic new band I'd just discovered, as if I'd done something more than listen to a radio show.

Artillery were from Denmark, not the usual location for a thrash metal band in 1986. Everyone else, it seemed, was either from the Bay Area of San Francisco or from Germany, with some up and comers in the UK too. Denmark surprised me, but I quickly picked up Fear of Tomorrow from Groové Records and Terror Squad when that came out too, with its godawful hand drawn cover. I may not have played them to death like other favourite bands I found in 1986 like Nuclear Assault or Metal Church, but they were really good albums and it was a shame when Artillery ceased to be, after a third good album in 1990's By Inheritance.

Well, it seems that they've got back together twice, in 1998 for a few years, and again in 2007, when it stuck. This is their tenth album, as the title might suggest, with six of those ten coming from this new incarnation. They haven't changed line-up that often, all things considered, but, while three original members were at the heart of the 2007 reunion, only guitarist Michael Stützer remains now, because drummer Carsten Nielsen left in 2012 and Stützer's brother and fellow guitarist died in 2019. The first of two bonus tracks, The Last Journey, is a tribute to him.

So what do they sound like now? Well, the opener, The Devil's Symphony, kicks off just like high tempo thrash ought to, with a simple but effective intro and a neat transition to speed. There's nothing new in the first minute of this song, but it's done really well by a tight band who know what they're doing. When the vocals of Michael Bastholm Dahl kick in, they're clean and surprisingly melodic, with a clear nod to power metal that becomes more obvious as the album runs on. The middle section chugs nicely and then ramps back up to full speed for the solos. It's a good opener in the vein of older Megadeth, back when they were a thrash band.

As Megadeth increasingly did over time, though, this album gradually sheds the speed. It's still there for In Thrash We Trust, which I'm guessing would have been the title track if this wasn't an anniversary release. I like the drums of Josua Madsen here, because it often feels like he's pushing the band just a little, pressing them to stay fast and maybe add a little nitro to that. It's obvious that, as fast as they get, he's always comfortable and could take any of these songs to the next level whenever they're up for it. Turn Up the Rage isn't as fast as we might expect from that title, but it's still up tempo.

However, the longer the album runs on, the more Artillery seem content to play at what would seem fast for a heavy metal band but certainly not full speed for a thrash band, even if it isn't traditional chugging at mid pace. The Ghost of Me is easily the slowest and most radio friendly song here, made all the more obvious by Force of Indifference coming in fast and frantic on its heels, but the approach is clearly not to truly blister, even on a song where it could have happened. For every song that lets it rip, like Force of Indifference, there's another that just doesn't want to, like Varg I Veum.

Megadeth continue to be a fair comparison, as would some of the heavy power metal bands in Germany like Primal Fear or even Accept, but I caught plenty of heavy Iron Maiden in this sound too. It's there in the galloping drums, the interesting riffs (check out that middle eastern riff towards the end of Silver Cross, for example) and the operatic power metal vocal style of Dahl. Some of this would play pretty well as a follow up to the Powerslave album. It's surprising to find that the second bonus track is a decent cover of Trapped Under Ice, because there isn't much early Metallica here. That's at its most overt on In Your Mind, especially its intro, and some of the other intros and breakdowns.

This is a good album, perhaps a better one for its variety of tempos even if I kept wanting it to speed up, and it makes me want to pull out my copies of Fear of Tomorrow and Terror Squad, but also check out the other newer albums that the band have been releasing. This is the first for Kræn Meier, their new rhythm guitarist, but the fourth for Dahl and Madsen. Bass player Peter Thorslund was on their third and final album before they split up the first time, but didn't return for the brief incarnation at the turn of the millennium. I look forward to their next release. It's good to see them still in business.

Kruk & Wojtek Cugowski - Be There (2021)

Country: Poland
Style: Hard Rock
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 14 Apr 2021
Sites: Facebook | Official Website | YouTube

I'm usually massively impressed by at least one track by a band who are completely new to me on any edition of the Raised on Rock radio show, so when its DJ, Chris Franklin, raves to me about a particular band, suggesting that it's up there as a discovery with Shadow Weaver and Blind Golem, favourites of both of us, then I'm going to listen. And he raved to me about Kruk, a Polish hard rock band who sing in English on this album, so here it is on my virtual turntable. And yes, he's right, as usual.

Neither of us had heard of Kruk before, though they've been around for a while, albeit not as long as their sound suggests. Given that their sound is rooted in early seventies British hard rock, bands such as Deep Purple, Uriah Heep and Led Zeppelin, with some flavour from the early eighties too, it wouldn't have surprised me to discover that they've been rocking Poland for decades. However, they formed as recently in 2001, with half a dozen studio albums and one live album to their credit before this one, which arrives seven years after their prior studio release, 2014's Before.

All the music was written by guitarist Piotr Brzychcy and vocalist Wojtek Cugowski, who gets a credit along with Kruk on the cover. That's probably because I don't believe he's a member of Kruk, instead leading the Polish rock band Bracia and what looks like a family band, Cugowscy. However, even if he's here as a sort of guest, he's integral to this release, as both a songwriter and as a vocalist, high in the mix because this is a vocal album as much as it's a guitar album. He also wrote all the lyrics.

Rat Race is at once a decent opener and an unrepresentative one. It's short and to the point at three and a half minutes, which is atypical. Only the closer at nearly five comes close, as the others range up from six to almost eleven. This one feels like the inevitable early seventies single that had to be short to get airplay, kicking in with an upbeat Deep Purple riff and Uriah Heep keyboards. It's perky and it's accessible and it's apparently easy, something that doesn't test a band that likes to be tested. It's still a good song, one that would be popular at gigs, but it doesn't stretch them.

Hungry for Revenge is deeper. It's one of those six minute songs, which means that it gets to breathe, with an atmospheric intro of eighties keyboards and woah vocalising, a more patient build and a neat instrumental section in the middle of the song, with a decent solo for Brzychcy. Cugowski reminds of David Coverdale here, but how he might have sounded had he chosen to join Uriah Heep after leaving Deep Purple instead of forming Whitesnake. It's another good song, but one with more substance.

And, talking of substance, then Kruk throw us headlong into Prayer of the Unbeliever (Mother Mary), which is a magnificent piece of music. Cugowski still croons like Coverdale, but he's not with Heep any more. This is Coverdale singing for Led Zeppelin and, as the song evolves, Diamond Head. Anyone who dug the longer songs on the recent Greta van Fleet, like The Weight of Dreams, will adore this album, because that's the length where Kruk play and they do it more often than the boys from Michigan.

It's perhaps most obvious here, because this song grows impressively, the Zeppelin groove giving way to Brian Tatler-esque riffs and invention. The second half is mostly instrumental, beginning with what initially feels like a Mark Knopfler solo, even it moves into Robin Trower territory. There's a tasty solo from Michał Kuryś on the keyboards too before the vocals come back in to wrap things up. Crucially, all of it works. It's Kruk's take not just on Achilles Last Stand but The Coffin Train too. It's a glorious epic.

And, quite frankly, I could stop right there. If you're not convinced that you need to buy this already, it isn't likely that I could say anything else to get you to that point. However, there's a lot more here. I'd suggest that none of these songs repeat the same approach, though there are common factors. Kruk are more commercial on Made of Stone, though it kicks in with a visceral riff, and The Invisible Enemy, which often carries a Magnum vibe. To Those in Power is the other ten minute epic and it's a bouncier one than Prayer of the Unbeliever. Be There (If You Want To) is a tasty shift down to wrap things up.

I'd say that, like the Blind Golem, which also ventured heavily into Uriah Heep territory, the first half is the superior one but the second isn't far behind. There isn't a duff track here and there aren't any average ones either. Every song is worth your attention and some of them are truly glorious. I'd also say that Chris is absolutely right, as always, to rave about this one. Like the Shadow Weaver and Blind Golem releases, I'm going with an 8/10 but may well up that to a 9/10 later as I really need to go back and do for the former at least. If more songs stood out like Prayer of the Unbeliever, I'd have gone 9/10 right out of the gate but it is a step above everything else here, with only To Those in Power coming close to matching it.

And I'm now eager to dive into the back catalogue of Kruk. Their debut in 2006 was a covers album in collaboration with Grzegorz Kupczyk, and it featured, shock horror, a set of classics from Led Zeppelin, Uriah Heep, Black Sabbath and especially Deep Purple, who were featured five times. They decided to go original for their second album, Before He'll Kill You in 2009, and apparently never looked back. Not being up on the Polish hard rock scene of the last twenty years, that's exactly what I need to do. Thanks for the rabbit hole, Chris.