The German Power Metal act with guitarist, vocalist, lyricist, songwriter and producer Piet Sielck in front is back with their fourth full-length album and the story of the Iron Savoir continues.
This album seems to follow a simpler and more direct style than the previous release Dark Assault. That's mostly a shame in my opinion because some songs quickly become too much alike in structure and thereby lacking something unique.
Overall judged this is not a breathtaking musical performance but the word solid seems to come back to me when I listen to it. The vocals are raw and fit the songs style nicely even though they aren't the worlds most melodic ones. The rhythm guitars are mostly crispy and strong, while the leads are from great to decent. The bass has some cool moments and supports the other instruments suitably while the drumming is very powerful.
Overall this is not the most stunning musical performance found, but too much technicality wouldn't have fitted in either.
Lets start with the albums highlights.
The opener
Titans Of Our Time is a pure hymn of melody and thrill; the huge catchy chorus is working astonishing and a fast rhythm section delivers a strong structure. Everything about this song seems to fit right in, the pumping guitar solo, a varied and exiting break and intense drumming to name some important points.
Thunderbird starts out quiet with some low keys before a groovy mid-tempo style is approached; the up-tempo chorus succeeds with its bombastic and electrifying style. The slow mid-section passage work interestingly and innovative stuff like this is clearly lacking on the rest of the album.
The epic touch that lies in the songs structure and its grand atmosphere helps make this a great cut.
Tales Of The Bold comes in pretty good too
, an up-tempo track with lots of powerful energy and a dynamic mid-section with catchy leads and fast drumming.
What about the rest of the album?
The title-track is featured with some melodic vocal lines and a cool grooving bass, but the overall flow of the songs is too ordinary and the chorus rather simple, a standard song all in all.
The rest of the album consists of songs that can be labelled decent but not overwhelming, as
Protector that goes for a harder groove that works pretty good. The main structure is just lacking something really exiting and the ending chorus that sounds way too much like Judas Priest's Electric
Eye is not exactly working well either.
No Heroes seems to rely very much on a quite uninspiring chorus and main rhythm, while the varied ending and lead guitar passage counts as quite successful elements. Anyway songs like these have a hard time keeping me interested and monotone is a word that unfortunately comes to mind from time to time while the disc spins around, some innovative thinking and more keyboard arrangements like on the Dark Assault album wouldn't have done any harm.
Production-wise things are in good order, a tight and packed sound that fits Power Metal music nicely, the vocals and chorus' have a dominant position that works splendid while the result on the drums calls out for a little more depth.
After four albums evolving around the same story I'm beginning to feel that some lyrics circle around the same topics just a little too much and at length it becomes quite unvaried, too much beer can also have a negative effect if you know what I mean!
The fight for freedom and displaying courage are not themes beheld science fiction only and relatable aspects are clearly found, but a better link between the songs would have helped, anyway with the limitation of the story they pass the test for moderately good.
My main impression is of a rather powerful release that nevertheless spins around the same kind of songs too much for its own good and one that has quite many tracks that only just gets past average. What makes this a decent record after all is the high amount of power and energy that is delivered with strong determination and the fact that it contains a couple of really great tracks.
Written by
Tommy Thursday, August 22, 2002
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