Iron Savior - Titancraft

Published May 14 2016

*=Staff's pick	Under Siege (Intro) Titancraft* Way Of The Blade* Seize The Day* Gunsmoke Beyond The Horizon The Sun Won’t Rise In Hell Strike Down The Tyranny* Brother In Arms I Surrender Rebellious

Genre	Heavy/Power Metal	Piet Sielck	Vocals
Tracks	11	Piet Sielck	Guitar
Running time	50 Min.	Joachim Kuestner	Guitar
Label	AFM Records	Jan S. Eckert	Bass
Release	May 20, 2016	Thomas Nack	Drums
Country	Germany	-	Keyboard
Producer	Piet Sielck
Similar artists	Paragon, Savage Circus

Ltd. Digipack includes bonus tracks: R&R Addiction and Protector (2016).

Iron Savior, which I consider to be the genre's absolute finest in their best moments, which is almost always, are back to follow up the past two great albums Rise Of The Hero (2014) and The Landing (2011). Rest assured, they are fully sticking to their trademark sound and formula and initiated fans are likely to land safe in this.

It opens quite good with the triple treat Titancraft, Way Of The Blade and Seize The Day. A trio with the classic build-up including great bridges, riffs and choruses, a good tempo and the aficionado of the genre will not feel disapponted one bit by this.

The album unfortunately then loses momentum a great deal during the mid part and does not really catch up until the great Strike Down The Tyranny again, and then it dips a bit again until the closing classic, rocking metal hymn Rebellious arrives. I love this band and I listen over and over again but most of the material will not stick this time. A handful of great riffs, a handful of choruses that hit, but seldom paired up in the same song, which makes it oddly balanced.

Many songs start good and promising and have a good carrying riff but still kind of fall flat along the way. I have hardly ever been even close to saying that Iron Savior have released a bad song, but here I feel that three songs had better been left in the idea box, namely Gunsmoke, Beyond The Horizon and I Surrender.

I don't at all need a fast pace all along, but I need passion in the mid tempo songs, and I don't feel that here. Overall it is way too generic and easy digested this time and when the choruses hit, they are most of the time a bit from the Iron Savior standard. In Brother In Arms we can even hear something that is dangerously close to a recycled Savage Circus chorus (Waltz The Demon), complete with the same tempo change during the end.

This is a definitely a decent and enjoyable album as a whole, partly really good, partly quite mediocre, but at the end of the day a disappointment considering their great track record.

Performance	Originality	Production	Vocals	Songwriting
7	6	7	8	5

Summary
5 chalices of 10 - Tommy