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Firestar is the twelfth studio album (or fifteenth, if you count the two Reforged albums and Megatropolis 2.0) from venerable power metal stalwarts, Iron Savior. This band has been at the forefront of the crunchy and melodic German power metal scene for a long time and have their formula down pat. The question in my mind when they put out a new album is not will it sound good, because they always sound good, but how good will the songs be this time? For those not familiar, singer/guitarist Piet Sielck is also a noted producer/engineer (Blind Guardian, Gamma Ray, Heavenly, the list goes on forever), so it’s no surprise Firestar sounds pretty much perfect; clear and crisp without sounding sterile and all the instruments are given room to shine, including Sielck’s distinctive gritty bellowing. That’s good because I’m happy to say that the songwriting is top-notch this time around, a solid mix of faster, double-kick burners ("Rising from the Ashes," "Curse of the Machinery") and mid-paced anthems ("Nothing is Forever," "Demise of the Tyrant") that are almost instantaneously going to stick in your head. There are a couple that stand above the rest, "Mask, Cloak, and Sword" and "Together as One," that have some amazingly infectious harmonies that rival early triumphs like "Titans of Our Time" from Condition Red. Iron Savior have by no measure broken the power metal mold, but they have shown that when they are firing on all cylinders, they can produce some of the highest quality power metal.