Album Review: "The Awakening" by Powerlord

The Awakening

Have you ever heard of Powerlord?

Well, in my opinion, to know about this band you'd have to be one of those fabled tape traders from the early days of thrash metal that got Metallica noticed by Johnny Zazula on the East Coast.

I surely had never been introduced to this band and I've been metal for a long time.

As is normally with the case with demos that are discovered and later released as albums, this album sounds gritty. There's literally no polish on this record at all. It takes money to be able to hire a producer and get it to sound clean.

Well, it's not entirely true to say that this album has no polish, because it does, just not in the production. This band was wildly talented.

Powerlord

The guitars are riffing faster than the speed of thought. The drums are pounding along. As for solos, well, we're talking about 80's metal, what do you expect them to sound like?

Well add about 15 to that and you might have an idea how these boys scream.

Speaking of screaming...

The vocalist straddles the line between thrash metal and power metal, but with a name Powerlord, what do you really expect him to do?

Typically when a vocalist tries to get into the Bruce Dickinson/King Diamond style of singing, they fall so far short that it's basically painful to listen to. (Did you know James Hetfield was even guilty of this?!) For Powerlord, Dane Cook does not fall flat.

Carrying on the vocal tradition of the one King Diamond and Sanctuary, he just wails. I can easily picture him in a large arena with his voice filling it.

This album ends up feeling like a story of what could have been. With just an independently recorded album they already crafted an album better than anything ever released by Anthrax or Exodus ever put out, but we just have a scant half hour of material by Powerlord.

Release: 8/19/14
Genre: Metal, Power Metal
Label: Shadowkingdom Records