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After a
four-year hiatus Iron Mask are back and back with a towering assault on
the senses entitled ‘Shadow Of The Red Baron’. A melting pot of
purebred old school Heavy Metal infused with the modern symphonic power
metal of today, in a totally powerful opus worthy of the Iron Mask name.
This
tremendous album gets underway in emphatic style with the title track
‘Shadow Of The Red Baron’, an all guns blazing rocker full of titanic
guitar licks courtesy of Dushan
Petrossi, a monstrous rhythm section of Erik
Stout on drums and Vassili Moltchanov on bass, together with the keyboards
skills of Andreas Lindahl, all coated in the tremendous metal
vocals of Valhalla Jnr
on all but two tracks.
I
said Valhalla Jnr was on all but two tracks, one being an instrumental and
the other being second track ‘Dreams’, which sees the vocals talents
of Oliver Hartmann taking over from Jnr. And what a track, Hartmann is
just a tour de force on the track, whilst Petrossi is just spellbinding on
the six-string razor.
From
here on in it's full steam ahead as the album unleashes monster after
monster track. Continuing on at the vocal helm is Jnr with
‘Forever In The Dark’, this is where the symphonic element comes into
focus as the orchestration an choral parts adds a background for Jnr and
Petrossi to lay down some of the finest Metal vocals and guitars of the
album so far.
It’s
more of the same on ‘Resurrection’ but with a darker more sinister
edge almost pagan in it’s feel, before returning to the more old school
metal feel with ‘Sahara’, a more riff spewn opus with Petrossi at full
tilt on this one, whilst Jnr gives his best vocal to date on this great
melodic metal monster.
‘Black
Devil Ship’ is moody triumphant metal as the intro of the waves crashing
on the shore and the wind blowing it gives this one an atmospheric opening,
but when the music takes over as the band rule the waves on this one,
especially Jnr who powers through like a man on a mission. And what
can I say about the guitar work on this one, Petrossi really shows what he
is made of on this one.
It's
old school all the way on the terrific riff laden ‘We Will Meet
Again’, and the phenomenal ‘Universe’, before it all changes with
the almost spiritual metal ballad ‘My Angel Is Gone’.
But
my favourite track of the album has to be anthemic metal of ‘Only The
Good Die Young’, a horn raising slice of metal that will heads banging
when played live I’m sure,
The
album closes with that instrumental I spoke of earlier ‘Ghost Of The
Tzar’, a real epic piece that has some vocal parts just a gruff angst
narrative that sparks off Petrossi’s fine fret work and adds that air of
menace to the piece and rounds off a great album and one that’s sure to
put to rest the four year absence from the band and mark the return of the
band in 2010.
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