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Artist: Ronny Munroe |
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To be honest apart from
being the frontman with Metal Church this is the only thing I know about
Ronny Munroe. I was never into Metal Church so this new album by
Munroe took me by surprise. The power of the vocals is just
tremendous and with the band behind him consisting of Rick Van Zant,
Randy Cooper, Izzy Rehaume and Johnny Ringo, Munroe’s solo career is
off to a great start with ‘The Fire Within', probably the heaviest
album to date on Metal Heaven Records.
Opening up his account with ‘Far’, Munroe’s vocals come powering through with the twin guitar assault of Van Zant and Cooper not far behind, while the thunderous rhythm section of Rehaume and Ringo is just intense and is equal to Munroe's ferocity. The fantastic rhythm section get's ‘What You Choose To Call Hell (I Call Home)' started, but it’s when Munroe’s vocals take over that the might of the album is unleashed. This is true Heavy Metal and with Michael Wilton of Queenryche guest slotting, this is one real muther of a metal track. There is no rest bite as the thunderous metal rains upon you with ‘Deafening Hypocrisy’, a ball busting slice of true blue collar metal, towering guitars, rampaging drums and bass and a powerhouse vocal. A real metalheads delight. ‘Rebuild The Ruin’ edges toward power metal with a pummelling double kick provided by Ringo and probably the best guitar licks of the album so far. It's all systems go once more with the dark metal vibe of ‘Delirium’ and the fantastic epic feel of ‘Demon Opera’, then we take a slight change of pace with one of my favourites from the album ‘Across The Sea Of Souls’. This one has a Ronnie James/Geoff Tate feel about it, a really wondrous track that I could play over and over again. A towering anthem with some soaring guitars courtesy of Van Zant and Cooper once more lifting things that much higher. As the album unfolds I’m left wondering why I haven’t made more of an effort to listen to the three Metal Church albums that Munroe sang on, because this guy has a true metal voice that just towers above everything and still sounds melodic as the vocals on ‘Desperate Man’ shows, the power and grace of the vocals on this song are some of the best on the album. It’s back to the
powerful full blown metal with the likes of ‘Ivory Towers’ and
‘Evil Genius’ before Munroe is joined by the THC (Texas Hippie
Coalition) for the superb grooved filled ‘Ride Me’. Then
Munroe gives us a tremendous cover of the Rainbow classic ‘Man On The
Silver Mountain’, which rounds off a great heavy metal album and one
that will make you want to check out out more of Munroe’s material, if
you're anything like me, because this guy has a fantastic set of pipes. |
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Tracklisting:
01.
Far
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All content copyright of The Mayfair Mall Zine unless otherwise stated. |
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