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Path of a Shadow from Sweden's Pressure is one of the weirder albums I've reviewed in my time here at The Metal Crypt. For starters, there is no page for them at Metal Archives but that's OK, the band has a presence online, so they aren't hermits. However, even on their website, I can't find a reference to Path of a Shadow so I'm not sure it's even a real album or some kind of compilation. Still, not the end of the world. Musically, this was sent to me under the genre of "heavy metal" and for fans of Manowar, Metallica and Accept but I'll be damned if I know of any albums by those bands that sounds like the music on Path of a Shadow beyond being hard rock/heavy metal. Let's dig in.

Who starts their album (again, if this is an album and not some label construct) with an 11+ minute spoken-word track? Pressure, that's who. Seriously, 11+ minutes of rambling exposition with some random guitar riffs and drums in the background. If you make it through the first "song", you will find that Pressure play music that ranges from a Sabaton-like power metal, with husky shouts and big guitars, to '80s hair metal à la Skid Row, including several ballads that brought visions of Headbangers Ball and having to sit through Slaughter and Extreme videos just to get to "One" from Metallica. The lyrics are a mix of Swedish and English (and maybe more) and the singer has a decent voice, but even in English I have no idea what he's singing about. On the band's website, they speak of the focus being on telling stories from multiple sides, but I can't follow even when reading the lyrics along with the songs, so they are clearly deeper and/or more esoteric than I. And if you thought the opening track was tough to sit through, the entire album runs a whopping 69 minutes and 31 seconds. The songwriting sounds like it is trying to be innovative, but to my ears, it is generic and tiresome.

Pressure is clearly aiming at the metal crowd (just look at their logo font) but Path of a Shadow comes across as unfocused and unsure of what it wants to be. Maybe some fans out there will find Pressure's scattershot and unconventional approach to their liking, but I have a hard time imagining it being very many.