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Now here's a damn cool "traditional" heavy metal album that has two main problems: Its length and the choice of some vocal melodies. Some of the songs here are excellent, but some scream "filler". They are not necessarily bad, but definitely not up to par with the better cuts. They could have cut the album short by 10-15 minutes and we would have had a better end result. The good news is that there's nothing "unlistenable" here. The music, especially the guitar work, is great. Very convincing riffs, sometimes very dark-sounding and aggressive, sometimes more lightearthed (I'd hesitate before using the word "commercial" to describe these.) What prevent some songs from attaining "excellent" status is the choice of vocal melodies for some of them. Now don't get me wrong, the singer does a very good job on most songs. It's not his voice but the choice of vocal style on a few songs that is the problem here. Take "The Sinister Show" for example: It starts off with some Saxon-esque guitar work that turns a little thrashier and that just calls for more aggressive vocals, but when the vocals kick in, the style would fit more a Bon Jovi song (in their more hard rock years, that is) than this song. Thankfully, only a few songs are victim of this.

I haven't heard the other Force of Evil album reviewed here, but this one is a overall a nice slab of 80s-style heavy metal where the guitar work shines above all - think classic Priest, Accept and Mercyful Fate to name a few. Other than the aforementioned problems, there isn't much to complain about here. Those seekers of the next big development in metal music will not find anything to their liking here, but those looking for some honest 80s metal with a modern production should get a kick out of this one.