Artist: Ram
   Title: Lightbringer
   Label: AFM Records

If you didn’t know better then you would swear that RAM are a German band with their hard edged Heavy Metal style but they are in fact Swedish.

The band definitely wear their influences on their sleeves as their latest album Lightbringer is all about twin guitar assaults, power-driven drums and thumping bass lines.  All the things that make Heavy Metal what it is and what made Judas Priest, Accept, UDO and their like, such worldwide Metal stars.

The three bands above are just some of the traits and influences that RAM have put into this album.  A glorious album of TRUE METAL!  Notable most is the vocals of Oscar Carlquist who hits the notes Halford wishes he still could and has more than a touch of Dirkschneider in his style and power.

The album opens up with the intro ‘Crushing The Dwarf Of Ignorance’ before unleashing the unbridled metal of the title track ‘Lightbringer’.  This is where the METAL really begins.  You can't help raising the horns in acknowledgement while you're listening to this track, such is the ferocity of the blistering metal.

The onslaught of metal is kept up big style with ‘In Victory’, with its twin guitar assault that is all conquering.  Think Priest meet Manowar and you won't be far wrong.

But if you really want to hear something nearer UDO/Halford than ‘Awaking The Chimaera’ will be right up your street.  It's full steam ahead with just a touch of gruff vocal to give it that extra dark edge to the power enthused rhythms of the track.

It's monstrous metal track one after the other, no ballads here just studs and leather, metal at its finest.  The band do slip something rather special into the album as we reach the nine minute opus ‘Suomussalmi (The Few Of Iron)’.  This is Battle Metal at its best.  Layer after layer of thumping metal riffs all interwoven with a thunderous rhythm section marching out the beat of battle giving no quarter what-so-ever.

If you‘re a true metalhead then RAM is the band for you.  METAL that takes no prisoners and shows no mercy.

Tracklisting:

1.  Crushing The Dwarf Of Ignorance
2.  Lightbringer
3.  In Victory
4.  Awakening The Chimaera
5.  Ghost Pilot
6.  Suomussalmi (The Few Of Iron)
7.  Blood God
8.  Titan
9. The Elixir
10. Prelude To Death

                    

 

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