The Red Tide

These artists were initially pouring gallons of whiskey, largely Bourbon, into both themselves and the audience in the early-90’s, a rousing carnival which led to the assembly of a pretty cool demo (“Calamitas”, 1991) of dexterous soaring speed metal, before an end was put to the free-(booze)flowing living. With the embargo put on the alcohol worldwide by the new aggro-government in the mid-90’s, the guys had no choice but to sober up and stitch something under their new name.

Thumbs up for a most defiant stance epitomized with this new repertoire, the band continuing exactly where they left off with the demo, the debut raising the retro speed metal flag higher than the sky even. The sophomore carried on in the same vein, the guys doing the speedy twist better than Scanner themselves even, whose outings from around the same time were more oriented towards the power metal idea.

The album reviewed here sticks with the previously exhibited delivery, a third opus woven of classic speedy tunes, the title-track unleashing the fast-paced fireworks with panache, the only unmitigated pullback being the not very passionate mid-ranged clean vocals which were brought from the Bourbon stint, and haven’t sobered up distinctly. Not to worry too much as the music compensates for any shortcomings, the levelled gallops on “Lies” instigating a bumpy rodeo, the latter taking a break on the heavy semi-ballad “The True Face of Love”. Such venerable pauses simply can’t become the order of the day, though, as the band rush on with more speed metal winners (“My Battle”, “Mighty”), the end of the journey immersed in less captivating lyrical notes (the soporific ballad “Words”) although the actual closer “Mary”, contrary to the expectations, is the liveliest piece here, a stupendous speed metal delight on which even the vocalist gets inordinately animated on a few higher-pitched notes.

Excellent stuff, fellows; sobriety sometimes begets goodness… and also consistency as the guys produced a third consecutive slab in the same vein, showing their middle finger to the ruling trends at the time. The embargo on old school metal was shattered determinedly; cause how much more challenging can it get than three albums of pure classic metal steel? Exactly. Cheers to that, preferably with a pint of cold Bavarian beer from the lads’ hometown, and an encouraging pat on the shoulder for a potential drunken reunion.