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Skycrest is the eleventh (or twelfth or thirteenth, depending on how you count Megatropolis 2.0 and Reforged – Riding on Fire) album from guitarist/singer/producer Piet Sielck's band Iron Savior. It's about as prototypical an Iron Savior album as you're going to hear touching, as it does, all of the power metal bases Sielck and crew have helped define over the last 25 years. There are double-kick drums, hooky choruses with Sielck's gravelly vocals layered over big, fat guitars playing major chords and a squeaky-clean production. The songwriting is formulaic, and Iron Savior don't even come close to any of power metal's well-defined boundaries and if anything, it's too saccharine for what we've come to expect from this band. You've got standard Iron Savior anthems like the perfectly air-guitar worthy "Ode to the Brave" with plenty of zip and lyrics about kings and wars and such but on the other hand, they turn up the glossy, poppy melodies on "End of the Rainbow," a song Heavenly would be all over, and "Erase Your Pain," a lighter-waving, stadium-friendly ballad straight from the heights of hair metal in the late '80s. Definitely not what we got on Condition Red.

Writing the same album over and over isn't necessarily a bad thing and when done well, can be enjoyable. Sielck and Iron Savior know their way around power metal and if you are a fan, it is hard to imagine you not liking some, if not all, of Skycrest. Be warned, however, it is a paint-by-numbers affair that doesn't kick nearly as much ass as this band has in the past.