Album Review: "The Revenant King" by Visigoth

The Revenant King

Let's take a crack at a different genre of metal than we normally get into around here.

Power Metal.

Every subgenre of metal is the one that someone you know uses as the butt of all the metal jokes.

Power Metal is the one that's fantastical. It's over the top. It was born and bred for very large arenas.

It's why Bruce Dickinson created the motions he did...so he could be seen moving his arm by the people in the back row of a 200,000 seat stadium in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Honestly, the name Visigoth attracted my attention. I love highly literate names. The album cover hearkens back to the days of kick ass Iron Maiden and Judas Priest album covers. He also looks like the dwarf played by Billy Connolly in the new Hobbit flick....

I like video games as much as the guy on the end.

This is the first time I've sat down to listen to the second generation, or are we on fifth now, of power metal...or Iron Maiden's children.

Well, true to form, Visigoth is epic. The guitars are highly overdriven and sound like that's all natural stuff instead of the highly effected tones of extreme metal.

There was, for my ear, a lack in the fourteen minute guitar solo department, but there were guitar parts all over the music.

It was impossible to listen for more than 15 seconds without hearing guitars doing something more than the thick rhythm riffs.

The vocals were right at the nexus point of Rob Halford and Bruce Dickinson, thereby creating a sound that's reminiscent of neither of them!

They sang about some interesting stuff, naturally, but my favorite song title was Dungeon Master. I just nerded all up when I heard that track.

This is a hard riffing, hard rocking, powerful record if you like powerful music.

Release: 1/27/15
Genre: Power Metal
Label: Metal Blade
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