Steel Says Last

Oh, the mighty have resurrected!? It's been over a dozen long years since Gods Tower tickled my senses. Can the 90's be that far away already!? GT's previous, so-called, album - 2001's "Abandon All Hope" was just a collection of covers and featured only two new tracks. The rest of the songs GT worked on at the time were shelved with untimely death of the guitarist and main songwriter Alexander Urakoff, followed by the band's subsequent break up. Luckily, these songs were kept cryonically in a safe place with a faint possibility in mind of reopening the trove one of these days, given the right conditions. The right conditions did eventually materialize, with the new guitarist Dmitry Lazarenko (allegedly Urakoff's protege, who has since left GT) ready to step out from the shadow of a man who essentially built the sound of the band he was now in. A precarious position, considering that the band was about to repack their old, unreleased songs, written about a decade ago, and push forth in an era quite different from the old days of glory.

Well, what else is there to do but quote Dave Matthews of all people: "good music is good music, and everything else can go to hell". Yes, I am inclined to say that "Steel Says Last" finds GT and, by posthumous extension, Alexander Urakoff, making a pretty good metal record more than anything else. The band's sound is instantly recognizable thanks to Leslie Knife's trademark half-yelled/half-spoken enunciations and the familiar blend of chunky, doom-influenced riffing combined with Slavic folk sensibility and an even greater predilection for classic metal injections. It appears that the late Urakoff himself became one of the few people to succeed in bringing together one's love for both metal and folk tradition in a way that gels more often than it does not, without joining the ranks of the village metal brigades, instead using the famed "bagpipe" guitar style, skillfully reproduced by Lazarenko on this record.

"The Eerie" was, to my ears, the only real doom album GT made. "The Turns", arguably, was already a pagan-metal piece of work. Its strong doom flavor via its riffing and guitar tone was still intact, yet the shifted songwriting accent was also apparent. It was clearly an album made by talented people, but it had one visible shortcoming: the band's thorough insistence on applying mainstream verse/chorus song structures to their aesthetic, which resulted in endless repetitions of ideas even the band's doom influence sometimes had hard time justifying. Nevertheless, this is, perhaps, what also helped cement the band's lasting popularity in their immediate region. "Steel Says Last" does not essentially stray from GT's songwriting formula but certainly refines it to a degree, resulting in a simultaneously more diverse and accessible music than what was heard on preceding works. Now, accessible, of course, is a double-edged (s)word when it comes to the metal underground, but GT, having covertly toyed with it previously on "The Turns" (not to mention them being around for quite a few years, during which they more or less put Belarus on the metal map), probably could not care less at this point. Which is probably why you could find them participating and performing at events ranging from major metal festivals to mainstream music programs on local network television. Yes, you can find a couple of youtube videos if you try. Did that make me cringe? Well, of course. But that is when I found a little Dave Matthews-looking demon sitting on my shoulder and endlessly whispering the quote from above into my ear.

"Steel Says Last" indeed shuffles the deck and zig-zags its way around in a manner that reflects the band under a light of greater versatility and - yes! - even a positive outlook. The life-affirming flair comes through via top-notch production job and a handful of pop music influenced keyboard arrangements on tracks such as "Earth, Wind, Fire & Blood" (its considerably catchy folk metal bounce led forward by a jaunty and infectious keyboard leitmotif), fist-pumping sing-along anthem "Civilization" (familiar to fans from "Abandon All Hope") or the absolute apotheosis of GT's pop flirtation - "Heroes Die Young" (a track whose sensibility arguably exhibits an almost hair metal swagger). On the other hand, a number of pieces stand as very apparent throwbacks to the slower, chunkier, structurally repetitive days of "The Turns". Second track "Rarog" is an all too obvious example (even to a point of occasionally similar instrumentation) and so is the album's closer "People of the Swamp" (whose introductory piano section parallels the track "Mysterious" on "The Turns"). Brooding mid-tempo chugs of "Living Mirror" and "Yesterday's Rivers" are not that far behind either and would seem relatively rigid were it not for the skillful arrangements and lead and solo guitar work that greatly enliven these songs' frames and Knife's sometimes monotonous intonations. I actually happen to be a fan of his, strictly speaking - nonexistent, vocal style, as repetitious as it is. He does manage to pull enough of a barely hovering folk flair when material calls for it, such as on the above mentioned "People of the Swamp" or during the verses of another notable hymn called "Evil", which also benefits from both - a cool bridge and a monumental chorus; Knife's rhythmically skewed recitatives, along with neo-classical keyboard parts, on "Yesterday's River" also happen to be a welcome addition to that song's pallet. Out of remaining tracks, another old acquaintance "Abandon All Hope" stands out by virtue of its pronounced militant rhythm and an up-tempo excursion. However, I'd probably single out "Poisonodog" as a biggest surprise due to its gleeful, in-your-face homage to the 80's days of yore. The closest analogy here would be the song "Rising Arrows" (again off of "The Turns") filtered through the prism of classic thrash and played at appropriate, high speed tempo - I'd say a necessary counterpunch after the pop coquetry on the first half of the album.

All of the above put together easily makes for the most perceptible work the band created, with quite a bit of - what the hell! - commercial (for a metal record), big arena potential. Then again, if the band is really attempting to sell out, at least they are doing it gradually. Knife's vocals are still rugged and will remain so simply because this is the only way he can "sing". The guitar tone is leaner and cleaner, yes, but the heaviness has not exactly evaporated and Lazarenko's guitar playing piles up plenty of technical trickery, from commonly used flageolets and pinch harmonics to grace notes so imperative to the "bagpipe" sound.... But my main question at this point really is not so much about selling out at all. It is whether the remaining band members themselves, having already utilized their back-stock, will be able (and willing) to pen any sort of original (and adequate) material on their own, without Urakoff's involvement; or whether they will just disappear for good after this possibly brief resurrection. I can only hope their steel will remain sharp.