|
Artist: Iron Fire |
|
|
As is often the case of many
bands these days, the tales of woe of record labels letting the band
down to the media shunning bands for the flavour of the month and so on,
this is not just one bands tale but many, and some bands don’t recover
and fail to resume and are lost to the anoles of time and sadly become
footnotes in the great book of metal.
But some take these adversities and build on them and seem to grow older and wiser, for their tales of woe soon become by-products of this business. One band to rise out of the ashes like a rock phoenix are Denmark’s Power Metallers Iron Fire, a band that showed such promise, but were then let down like so many others. Thankfully the band have
rekindled their love of guitar driven metal, huge thunderous drums and
massive bass lines and in 2006 teamed up with Napalm Record for their
aptly titled 'Revenge' album. This was quickly followed up in 2007
with 'Blade Of Triumph' and subsequently toured to great reviews.
It seemed very much that Iron Fire were back and more than ready to
settle old scores. Now in 2009 the band led
by Martin Steene return with their latest power driven album ‘To The
Grave’. Joining Steene we have Kirk Backarach on guitars, Martin
Lund on bass and completing the line-up Fritz Wagner on drums. This album is a powerhouse release that will have all the metal-heads in raptures, with Steene at the helm with his true metal vocal, and this combined with the streaming guitars of Backarach and the pulsating rhythm section of Lund and Wagner, the band set out their stall to conquer the world one album at a time. This is now their third assault and what a great album! Things get underway with ‘The Beast From The Blackness’, an awesome opener which is all double kick and streaming guitars. A real kick-ass opener and worthy of any in this genre. The towering metal assault continues with what can only be described as a battle hymn ‘Kill For Metal’ is as anthemic a metal score you will ever hear. It just screams out METAL!! You can almost feel yourself raising the horns and saluting its splendour with it's double time bass and soaring guitars all wrapped around those tremendous vocals of Steene. You just have to let yourself succumb to the sheer strength and almost Barbarian metal of the album. If you are really going to absorb what the band are trying to do with this album, the brute force of is not only part and parcel of the band, it’s a must and with the titanic metal anthems of ‘To The Grave’, the thunderous almost hedonistic ‘The Battlefield’ being just two perfect examples of how the band have taken the Power Metal genre and made it their own. The album is all conquering and keeps that Barbarian feel with the massive ‘Cover The Sun’ and the equally bombastic ‘March of The Immortals’, on which Backarach simply rules supreme, ‘Frozen In Time’ and the head-bangers dream ‘Doom Riders’. Some of the songs might
seem a little clichéd to those not familiar with the scene but this is
what the fans want. They want fantasy, they want heroes, they want
to be taken away to another land where good verses evil and only the
strong survive and that’s what Iron Fire are all about and they do it
so well. If you're into the likes of Helloween, Powerquest,
Manowar and their like, then this is for you. |
|
|
Tracklisting:
1. The Beast From The
Blackness
|
|
|
All content copyright of The Mayfair Mall Zine unless otherwise stated. |
|