Stormwarrior
It’s taken 3 and a half years but it’s finally here, the third offering from German power metallers Stormwarrior. It’s called ‘Heading Northe’ and if you like your 80’s influenced speed metal in the same league as Helloween and Running Wild, then this one’s certainly up your street.
The album concept is a bit of a giveaway due to the Viking ship image on the cover, you already know before listening what the theme’s going to be. Nordic mythology, battles, war and power and they don’t make it subtle at all. So if you like this kind of subject matter you’re all set, if not then it’s just as easy to ignore the lyrics and concentrate on the music.
Talking musically I give full credit to this band. The constant ferocious tempo and solid drumming really takes quite a talent, it’s also packed with catchy melodic choruses and some sensational guitar solos. Even if you’re not a fan of this genre, you’ve got to hand it to them, they’re bloody good musicians. The overall feel of this album is very dramatic, almost theatrical in places. There’s the odd vocal snarl, thrashy riffs and a hell of a lot of guitar noodling resulting in epic 7/8 minute songs. This will keep the shredders happy no doubt. To those not accustomed to this style it might sound a little over the top in places, or throughout for that matter but I guess this is what it’s all about. Power metal that did not sound powerful would probably be fast paced soft rock, or crap.
The only real problem that I see is the lack of diversity on the album. The tempo is pretty much constant, there’s little in the way of dynamic variation and the songs aren’t exactly memorable. But if you’re buying this for the uplifting feel and the insane fret-board magic it’s probably not something that’s going to bother you.
In all ‘Heading Northe’ has one agenda and that’s speed and power, as far as I can see they do this pretty well and for this reason I’d say it’s pretty good, definitely one for the power metal enthusiasts and even those that fancy giving the genre a fair go. For anyone else it’s probably best to avoid, I get the feeling that Stormwarrior don’t care about appealing to the masses. Judging by ‘Heading Northe’ they do exactly what they want to do and if this is creating super fast power metal about warriors and Vikings then they’re going to do it and who’s going to stop them?