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Overlorde is something of an underground legend in the traditional metal scene. Formed nearly 40 years ago, their catalog is the epitome of sparse, consisting of their 1987 EP, a 2000 collection of demo material, and their debut full-length from 2004, Return of the Snow Giant. Another demo showed up in 2017 and now, at the end of 2023, nearly 20 years after their last album and 40 years after forming, they've signed to No Remorse Records for their second album, Awaken the Fury. Talk about taking the long way to get where you're going.

What hits you first with Awaken the Fury are the guitars, and I mean both the guitar of Mark Edwards and the bass of John Bunucci. They have great individual tone and both are prominent in the mix, with the bass clearly audible in most songs, which is good because they work together so well. I was very often reminded of how Alex Lifeson and Geddy Lee worked together on those early Rush albums where Lee would pick up the melody line with his bass while Lifeson was off on a solo. This is particularly noticeable on tracks like "Gargoyles," "Paranoid Delusions," and "Battle of Marathon," which have a similar vibe during the lead breaks to "By-Tor and the Snow Dog" from Fly by Night or the album-side tracks from 2112, Return of the King, etc. The other thing that hits is new vocalist George Tsalikis, of Zandelle and Gothic Knights fame, who takes over the microphone from Bobby Lucas, who sang on Return of the Snow Giant. He's a good singer with a lot of range and voice made for metal, but either the lines he's singing are purposely meant to clash with the music or he's just plain not hitting the notes. This happens throughout Awaken the Fury where he's generally OK, goes off on several jarring tangents, and comes back, but it is especially challenging on "Destroy Us All." You have to sit through all the flat sounding vocals to get to one of the sweeter solos on the whole album. I know Tsalikis can hit the right notes because he's all over the high-pitched howls on "Gargoyles" and channels Bobby Blitz beautifully on "Ashes," making his off-key warbling on the rest of the songs all the more perplexing. I was really looking forward to this album and, while the riffs, solos, etc. are excellent, the singing makes parts of it hard to tolerate which is why it pains me to rate it as low as I did. Maybe others will find it hits different.