Carnage Victory is the latest release from Germany's Sacred Steel. It is a fairly unremarkable mid-paced Heavy/Power Metal offering that occasionally drifts towards speedier Power Metal or displays a bit of NWOBHM influence. You've heard all the riffs before and singer Gerrit Mutz has a voice that seems OK at first, but started to grate on my nerves by the end of each listen. His Johnny Rotten-like warble sounds off-key, more often than not, and that bugs the hell out of me. Everything about Carnage Victory is just kind of blah, from the sound to the songs.

Oh, except the lyrics. Here's where Sacred Steel set themselves apart from the crowd. With a name like Sacred Steel, one might expect the typical Power/Heavy metal subjects, like Dragons or Kings or Heavy Metal, to be re-hashed, but not so with Sacred Steel. A vociferous anti-religious theme runs through Carnage Victory. At first I thought it might be a gimmick, like so many other bands have used, but whether singing about pedophilic priests ("Broken Rites") or pro-Satanism ("Ceremonial Magician of the Left Hand Path"), Sacred Steel use such uncompromising imagery it is hard to not think this is what they truly believe. Not that it is a bad thing; they are entitled to sing about whatever they want. But when a band wields ideology like a blunt instrument, I have a hard time hanging in there with them. I expect this level of brutality from Death and Black Metal bands, but not Power, but that's just me, and maybe I'm missing something here.

Even if I am, I still don't want to listen to Carnage Victory anymore. The performances are what drag the album down. There's nothing memorable, even after several listens. Seek your fix elsewhere.