Iron Savior - Megatropolis
Whilst you've got your Sonata Arctica's, your Rhapsodys and your Stratovarius's, there really is a lack of old school styled power and speed metal in the metal scene these days. However, bands such as Iron Saviour still soldier on with their sound, and the bands latest 'Megatropolis' whilst not being the most innovative record certainly provides a fair few entertaining moments!
So, what does 'Megatropolis' sound like? Think a dose of old school Maiden, a pinch of Queensrhyce and then a scoop of all the other traditional hard rock and metal acts and what you've got in your head will come pretty damn close to Iron Saviour's sound. The song structures of the album are pretty typical, verse-chorus-verse-chorus until you hit a nice bridge and then sail smoothly into a final rendition of the chorus, nothing ambitious but fairly entertaining. It's also of note that 'Megatropolis' contains the continuation of the epic sci-fi story started with the band's self-titled debut, whilst I myself don't know the plot, I feel I should laud the band for this anyway as a story or concept behind an album is always much more entertaining than twelve songs about random topics.
The production for 'Megatropolis' however is distinctly underwhelming. Music of this sort should sound ballsy, hard, fast, entertaining... instead what we get is an album that has the quality of the better end of the demo scene. Sure, it doesn't sound [I]bad[/I], but when the songs could be doing much more with themselves it does detract from the experience of listening to the album. The guitars are weak, muted; the drums are too high and a little too tinny, infact, it's really only the vocals that sound like they've had much effort at all put in to making them sound good and realise their potential.
Overall then this is a rather unambitious, uninspiring yet still quite fun little nugget of an album. Iron Saviour and 'Megatropolis' are not bringing anything new or innovative to the genre, and instead are quite content to re-tread old ground, yet they still manage to be reasonably entertaining despite the generic nature of their music. This isn't an album with many secrets, it won't yield up anything new on repeated listenings, and there's nothing to take from it apart from its face value, but nonetheless 'Megatropolis' provides a reasonably entertaining listen.