Slightly disappointing and predictable release
You'd be forgiven if you thought you'd accidentally picked up a relic from your eighties classic rock collection as soon as Death Rides The Night starts off Enforcer's latest album Death By Fire. Enforcer are a Swedish Heavy Metal who are looking to recreate the sound and magic that the eighties heavy metal scene had. It is all very impressive, the band sound tight and competent as they tirelessly move from one energetic riff to the next. But to a certain extent listening to them can become a bit tiresome. Why listen to a band trying to recreate the sound completely, when I could just grab an album from that era and listen to the real thing. That's not a complete dig at Enforcer, they are a talented group of musicians pursuing their own crusade against the music business but, to be influenced by bands from the past is one thing, to completely mimic them is something else. Perhaps another area this album suffers is that fact that it fails to captivate in the same way their previous two offerings have been able to. When Enforcer released Diamonds and Into The Night the nostalgic feel of the music was far more exciting. This time round however, it's just all very samey.
With all that being said, there are still some top tracks across this album. With Crystal Suite you finally get a sense of something a bit different. Here we have the band being far more adventurous with their riff interchanges, and just being a lot more imaginative with their talent. This song in a nutshell is what this band is capable of. The influences from the past are all of course still present, but there is just something different about it, it's perhaps the only song on here which they've stamped their true authority on. Crystal Suite is an Enforcer song.
In fact the latter stages of the album show more signs of this. It almost feels like Enforcer through the course of the album are shaking loose the shackles of everyone commenting they are too samey and beginning to make a real mark, which makes it interesting to see where they will go next. Whether they meant this or not is unlikely however. As already noted, this band do have the talent on the instruments, they just need to refocus their efforts a bit more into showing more raw imagination in their song-writing.