It's a heart-warming testament to the longevity of AOR that a band like FM has managed to resurrect themselves in the current century and sustain a career on sounding like a tad harder, more streamlined version of early-'90s Toto. Stuff like that happens, you know the world's not all bad.
No offense to any fans of Ghost out there, but I haven't been following along since their first couple of albums, and after my first spin of this, their 5th one, I was ready to just leave this review be.
The last HammerFall album I got was 2009's "No Sacrifice, No Victory". A fine album. Better than its two predecessors, but not as good as the band's classics, and definitely nowhere near their masterpiece, "Crimson Thunder" (2002).
So far, my familiarity with Author & Punisher – a.k.a. Tristan Shone – has been limited to the one show I saw him play in Denmark in 2019. It was a near-mind-expanding display of cold, inhuman soundscapes not unlike how you'd imagine the sonic backdrop for when Skynet becomes self-aware and the machines take over.
In a world as tumultuous as it's been these last six years, there are certain constants of nature acting as lifelines. One such lifeline is heavy metal.
I can't believe this is happening. I cannot believe that Magnum – the world's most unfairly overlooked hard rock group – is still putting out such high-quality material. In fact, I might start to cry with joy writing this review.
I only discovered Archspire a couple of weeks ago. I was blown away. And all the more so after several spins of this, their fourth long-player.
With an uncanny resemblance to another classic one-man governed band – Germany's Running Wild – Ministry mastermind Al Jourgensen broke up with himself from around 2009, but reformed with himself again after a couple of years and kept on releasing albums.
