Wind Rose - Trollslayer (2024)

Country: Italy
Style: Folk/Power Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 4 Oct 2024
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I had a feeling this would be the case, so I very deliberately avoided reading my review of the prior Wind Rose album, 2022's Warfront, before listening to this new one a bunch of times and taking all my notes. Sure enough, though, most of what I jotted down echoes what I said last time, meaning that this review could mostly be reduced to the single word "Ditto".

Now it's not quite that simple. This isn't as good as its predecessor, but I still enjoyed myself on my first time through and I find that I'm still enjoying myself in much the same way half a dozen more listens in. It's notably shorter, mostly because its songs are shorter. Intro aside, Warfront had only two of nine tracks lasting fewer than five minutes. On Trollslayer, that's five of eight with a further two exceeding that mark by no more than five seconds. The exception is the closer and, while it's a departure from everything else, as indeed Tomorrow Has Come was last time out, the two songs are very different otherwise.

So they're not quite the same album for a few reasons but fundamentally they sound very similar. This band know their sound and they stick to it ruthlessly. The line-up remains unchanged, as it has been since 2018 when drummer Federico Gatti, added as a touring member a year earlier after the departure of Daniele Visconti, joined officially, and their approach is exactly the same. As before, the weakest aspect is that every song works in exactly the same way and sounds very similar. Try a song, any song (OK, maybe not No More Sorrow). If you like that song, you're going to like all the other songs too. If you don't like that first one, nothing else is going to change your mind. Extend that suggestion to cover both albums and it would hold true.

That style is consistent power metal with copious folk elements and a fundamental welcome in its sound. The lead vocals of Francesco Cavalieri are deep and resonant and they constantly invite us to join in. Behind him is Tommaso Corvaja who serves as a choir. Much of the time, while there's a single vocal line, it feels like there's more than one voice and that holds even when there really is only one voice. That adds to the sense that Wind Rose are the jukebox in Valhalla and everyone in the vast room sings along. Of course, chests are ample so microphones are replaced by huge mugs of ale.

It primarily works at two tempos, one of which tends to bulk up to the other. That means that it's a tough call to identify standout tracks because what makes a song our favourite is going to fall to a personal connection to a hook or a melody. Mine are probably The Great Feast Underground and To Be a Dwarf. I happen to like the melody in the former and I also dig the softer midsection where most of the instrumentation falls away for the vocals to continue over what sounds very much like a harpsichord. The hooks on the latter are irresistible and there's also a glorious keyboard riff to kick things off.

I could imagine a lot of people plumping for Rock and Stone, which is a real stomper of a song, an audience participation number in an album full of audience participation numbers. It's catchy and it absolutely knows it, which is why it's one of the few songs to stay at the slower tempo for most of the song. It simply doesn't need to speed up to feel powerful and so we don't move as fast, here in our chairs. Every song here makes us move, even if it's just to sway back and forth as if we're on a bench with a thousand of our brothers in arms singing and swaying in unison.

All that said, there's something to be said for all these tracks. Dance of the Axes maybe increases the tempo just a little bit more to add a sense of speed and urgency. Trollslayer features a lovely instrumental section during its intro. Legacy of the Forge plays up the choral approach even more, with whole sections ditching words and relying entirely on vocalisations. Then there's the closer, No More Sorrow, which changes almost everything.

It's a good song, but being the only one of nine to really attempt something different means that it feels a little out of place. Cavalieri does the same job, as do the various other musicians when it picks up power, but the mood is totally different. There's a second voice that seems pleading and sad, two words that don't apply to anything else on this album. That's especially apparent during the softer section that wraps up the song, a nod back to that harpsichord midsection in The Great Feast Underground. There are hints at harsh voices too, albeit mostly behind clean ones. And, of course, it runs on for seven and a half minutes when nothing else gets its claws past five.

All in all, this is a good old friend of an album, as Warfront was, but it's not quite as successful. On that one, I felt safe with an 8/10 and pondered a 9/10. This is a solid and utterly reliable 7/10.

Pilots of the Daydreams - Invented Paradise (2024)

Country: Switzerland
Style: Progressive Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 20 Sep 2024
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Here's an interesting release from Switzerland that it took me a little while to figure out. It came to me as progressive rock, which isn't unfair. The instrumentality seems to be rooted in prog rock but it often shifts from unusual rhythms and bass lines to a more commercial sound that draws on new wave and goth. The vocals, which are unusually prominent for a singer who's also the band's only guitarist, are often goth too but also dip into prog metal. Songs shift back and forth between these influences, varying the amounts of each until it all starts to feel like a single sound.

The first four tracks alternate between two styles. The title track kicks off like a prog rock band on a Sisters of Mercy kick. There's a drive to the instrumentation but the drums are clearly played by a human being, Biagio Anania, and the sound isn't as reliant on deep groove. It's a sparser sound with the bass reminiscent of Peter Hook's Joy Division years. Marco Predicatori's voice has all the confidence and the presence of Andrew Eldritch and, especially when he deepens it, he even sings similar lyrics. "You're my silent ocean" he sings and makes it sound like three lines.

It's a fascinating voice because it's full of intonation and flourish. He's never just delivering lyrics, he's delivering messages and he's having the sort of fun doing it that lead vocalists aspire to have and guitarists rarely come close to. That he's both in Pilots of the Daydreams means that he's one of those rare creatures who does both well but surely thinks of himself as a vocalist first. I tend to find that the vast majority of people doing both are guitarists who sing not singers who play. Sure, there's a peach of a solo on Perfect Storm that shows he's a very capable guitarist and it isn't the only one, but every single song on the album highlights why he's a magnetic vocalist.

Perfect Storm is similar to Invented Paradise but it turns down the Sisters influence and turns up a prog rock and prog metal side. The rhythms are more unusual. The bassline does more interesting things. The vocals soar more into Queensrÿche territory, Eldritch and Geoff Tate being a surprising pair of influences to mix together, especially if you add some David Bowie to that list. Butterfly in Your Heart returns to the Sisters mindset, but with even more Hook in Walo Bortoletto's bass and a falsetto added to Predicatori's range. Then Euphemia returns to the proggier side once more. It seems like clear alternation.

And then Among Wolves and Sheep changes things up completely, kicking in hard like a classic rock song. In fact it kicks in hard rather like a particular classic rock song because I found myself singing along to Montrose's Space Station #5 every time I repeated it. Bortoletto emphasises Hook style basslines and gets some real moments in the spotlight here to make that clear. He's very audible throughout, partly because the production likes it that way and partly because the guitar takes a back seat surprisingly often. Eventually, the Sisters and Joy Division are trawled in as well, but not at the cost of the classic rock.

And that's the sound of Pilots of the Daydreams, because the first half includes almost everything in various combinations and the second half merely varies it across another five tracks. That may well be one reason why most of my favourites here arrive early, but I dig Sleeping Karma too with even more of a deliberating emoting Geoff Tate in Predicatori's vocals and other moments worthy of a note here. There's more Queensrÿche than just Tate in the opening sequence, there's some Rush in the background and Predicatori even finds some Kate Bush late in the song, which is wild.

There's a track before Sleeping Karma and four more after it, none of which let the side down but none of which seem to enforce their presence on my mind, even after half a dozen times through. I wouldn't call them filler because every one of them is enjoyable, but I also wouldn't call any up to the standard of the first half. I do like the riff in the second half of Set These Dreams on Fire and the jangly build in Close Your Eyes, but I tend to forget them until those song repeats and they're right there again. Hypnotised lives up to its name, I guess, and Everything Has an End must have.

Pilots of the Daydreams are new to me, but I like this album and appreciate its blending of styles I wouldn't have thought would work together. They've been around since 2019 and this is a follow-up to their 2021 debut, Angels are Real, an idea referenced in the lyrics this time out too. I wonder if everything here was birthed there or whether this shows growth.

D-A-D - Speed of Darkness (2024)

Country: Denmark
Style: Hard Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 4 Oct 2024
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I remember D-A-D from way back in the day, starting when they were still called Disneyland After Dark. They put out some excellent albums, though the one I played the most is the one you might expect, their 1989 breakthrough album, No Fuel Left for the Pilgrims. I never forgot where they throw the best damn parties and trawled Rim of Hell out to be played when I joined Chris Franklin in the Raised on Rock studios a couple of years ago. I completely failed to notice that, unlike most bands from the eighties, they never split up and only ever changed line-up once, swapping drummers in 1999. This is their thirteenth studio album.

It starts out how I might expect, with some real Aerosmith swagger on God Prays to Man and 1st, 2nd & 3rd. There's more of that to come, not least on Live by Fire, with a Mama Kin feel to it, and Waiting is the Way, which is angry Aerosmith with some pop punk in the chorus, but there's much more here than just one influence, even if it's an expected one.

I'll skip over The Ghost for now, because it stands alone on this album, both in style and quality, as the song that both impressed me most on a first listen and yet continued to grow with subsequent listens. I'll jump forward to Speed of Darkness instead, which sets a few other influences in play. It kicks off with a grungy riff, like Nirvana covering Black Sabbath, but then shifts into a mellow Red Hot Chili Peppers vibe. Before long, it does both at once, with is interesting to say the very least. There's a gorgeous guitar solo here, from one of the Binzer brothers, probably Jacob, and it isn't the last of those. There's another on I'm Still Here that puts him even more in the spotlight as he plays.

I'm Still Here takes the same mellow Chili Peppers approach and so does Head Over Heels, which adds some of the country that they used to play back in their earliest days. Then again, I recently watched The Charismatic Voice pointing out that Under the Bridge was almost a country song in vocal style, so maybe it came with the territory and muscle memory kicked in. That means that we now have sassy glam-infused hard rock, grungy stoner rock, mellow alt rock and country, all mixed together in ways that sound entirely natural for this band.

Strange Terrain relies on that grungy stoner country vibe. In My Hands does the same thing, with a touch more grunge and distortion for good measure. Jesper Binzer's voice is surely manipulated in post-production for effect. Everything is Gone Now ditches the country and makes the stoner rock more commercial to become a bouncy grunge song. Automatic Survival cuts back on the distortion and plays up that bounce to remind of the glam rock that started out the album. This one became my second highlight because it's more thoughtful than God Prays to Man or 1st, 2nd & 3rd and, like The Ghost, it's a real grower, getting better on every listen.

And, speaking of The Ghost, I'll jump back to that now that you have a strong idea of the flavours that pervade this album. I initially got a new wave vibe out of it, albeit played entirely with rock instrumentation rather than electronica, but it got more alternative as I listened to it again and again. I find the guitarwork especially fascinating, given that it sounds more and more like early U2 covering the Sisters of Mercy. It's a haunting piece that, like Automatic Survival, just keeps on getting better with every listen.

There are other songs here too, because most of them aren't long and they just keep on coming. I actually started to wonder on my first listen, before I took many notes, whether I'd left the album on repeat by accident and I hadn't paid enough attention to remember the tracks that were on a second time through. It turns out that I was only fifty minutes in, partway through the final song, so I'd effectively told myself that it feels like a longer album than it is. In reality, there are merely a lot of songs, fourteen in all, most ranging from just shy of three minutes to not much over four, the one exception being Automatic Survival, which milks its groove until five and change.

It looks like the band are talking up the album as their best in a while and, for once, they might be right and not just spinning their latest record as best they can to the press. I've heard that line on far too many occasions from bands who have completely lost the plot to take it as read. The single reason I can't back them up is that I haven't heard their previous few albums to compare. What I'd be happy to add is that this sounds like the D-A-D I remember but matured by a few decades to be wary of being pigeonholed. They take each of these songs where they feel they should go and, for the most part, I'm not going to argue with their decisions, with a little punk here, a little country there and even a bit of surf for good measure.

Here's where I'd say welcome back, but D-A-D have never been away, so instead I'll say well caught up to myself. I may well have missed some good stuff over the past couple of decades. I hope that you haven't.

Andy Gillion - Exilium (2024)

Country: UK
Style: Symphonic Melodic Death Metal
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 11 Oct 2024
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Andy Gillion is a former lead guitarist for Finnish melodic death metal band Mors Principium Est, with whom he spent a decade, so it shouldn't surprise that this third solo album from him sounds rather like them. Given that he was also their principal songwriter during that time and handled orchestrations on top of his guitar duties, even playing bass on their 2020 album Seven, a record released three months after he was fired, it would be more surprising to find that it didn't sound like them. The more telling question is whether the next original Mors Principium Est album will sound like Mors Principium Est, with only vocalist Ville Viljanen remaining.

To be fair, after checking out Seven, I'd say that this sounds like that but more so. Sure, it remains melodic death metal with a symphonic edge to the songwriting, but it's more epic, more lively and wildly more energetic. Part of that is the furious pace set by Dave Haley, an Australian drummer known for a whole slew of bands, including Psycroptic, but a lot of that is in the guitars too and the urgency of the vocals. Prophecy, the opening track, barrels along nicely, but so does The Haunting and the second half of As the Kingdom Burns absolutely blisters.

I have to call out As the Kingdom Burns as the highlight of the album, partly because of how that second half blisters but also partly because guest vocalist Brittney Slayes of Unleash the Archers is a welcome addition. I don't dislike Gillion's vocals at all, whether he's singing harsh, as he does on most of the songs, or clean, as he does in duet on this track, but Slayes adds an extra power metal level to this music and it works very nicely, especially when she launches that glorious second half with an escalating scream. The album could have done with more of the pitches she hits here.

However, other than a single moment on A New Path where I could swear I heard her again, she's only on that one track and the album shifts firmly back to Gillion's harsh male vocals. Fortunately, he finds an agreeable balance between intelligibility and growl that's also raucous enough to kick the metalcore crowd into action. I like it, even if that moment of Slayes (if indeed that's who that was almost three and a half minutes in) reminds that it could have been more. There's enough of the epic here to suggest that any female vocalist like Slayes or a male vocalist who sings clean and soars in the range of a Bruce Dickinson would emphasise that element better than anyone singing harsh.

But enough of me reviewing what isn't here. Let's get back to what is. Gillion's vocals are good but his guitarwork is excellent. There's an especially strong solo in The Haunting and another on the closer, Acceptance, and there are furious barrages of melody all over the album, including A New Path, Avenging the Fallen and Call to Arms. Sometimes, like on Avenging the Fallen, they're given a repetitious approach that makes our conditioned ears think of them like riffs. It's fair to say that they are, but they're there to be melodies and they work well in that vein, providing the element that a higher pitched clean vocalist would bring to the band.

Matching the epic nature of the music is the symphonic nature of the music. There are no soaring sopranos here, but the songwriting is clearly done with that sort of structure firmly in mind. Most obvious on Avenging the Fallen, which starts out with a keyboard duelling a guitar, drops entirely into a keyboard swell midway and ends with a surprising prog rock-esque drop, the symphonic side is there throughout the album. Sure, we hear it most in the intros, especially when Gillion delivers them on piano like Acceptance, but that keyboard layer is rarely there just to deepen the sound; it tends to adding another layer that wouldn't be there otherwise. If we could listen to Call to Arms without the keyboards, it would be a very different song indeed.

At the end of the day, I like this album a lot. Whatever Mors Principium Est get up to in the future, it's clear that the songwriting approach that defined their sound over the last decade will be live and well in the hands of their principal songwriter, Andy Gillion. That songwriting may be the best aspect of this album, but his guitarwork, especially in conjunction with Dave Haley's drums, is very happy to fight it for that title. His vocals aren't in the same class, but they're still good and, when this reaches its most symphonic, like in the chorus on Call to Arms, they sound even better. Thanks for sending this one over, Andy, and all the best for the future.