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With the band Rocka Rollas, one of Cederick Forsberg's myriad endeavors, on hold but with time on his hands due to the Covid pandemic, the Swedish guitarist has re-recorded their second album, Metal Strikes Back and added the four songs from the Conquer EP, originally released the year before the album, and dubbed it Metal Strikes Back: Definitive Edition. I'm a sucker for fast metal and I enjoyed Pagan Ritual (the follow up to Metal Strikes Back) and to a lesser extent Celtic Kings, so this was my chance to review Metal Strikes Back, an album I had not heard before. Essentially, it is a rehash of the faster moments from Hammerfall's Glory to the Brave. It has a lot of the same sort of riff patterns, vocal hooks and, of course, power metal speed. The vocals, which were the only things not re-recorded, are not great and even though the singer is also in Ancient Empire, here he sounds overmatched. The songwriting is cliché with lots of tracks featuring "metal" in the title and lyrics about war and violence, which can be cool, but here they are covering all too familiar ground. I haven't heard the original album or the Conquer EP but unless you can't get enough Hammerfall and Painkiller-era Judas Priest (the band IS called Rocka Rollas, of course they're going to sound a little like Priest) or those original releases sound terrible, I don't see much point in owning this "definitive edition."