Wrathwind

Lately it seems as though new bands are keen to take existing names and album titles that simply scramble them together to come up with something at least somewhat original and distinctive, success levels naturally varying. Along for the ride is a fairly common approach of splicing together differing styles in odd ways, something that was perhaps first suggested by the pioneering bands in the melodic death sub-genre and has been blossoming ever since. This is the world where bands like the recently formed Canadian project Ironstorm exist, a sort of portal between the distant past and a more recent one, and their near LP length EP Wrathwind sees these two strains of past metallic trappings realized in a modern context largely through playing faster and perhaps a tad rawer than the competition.

Although the chief influences that shape this album are Iron Maiden and a number of the faster and thrashing melodeath bands out of Sweden, they wind up sounding a fair bit like fellow Canadian power metal modernists Unleash The Archers. Perhaps the chief distinction between them is a greater contrast between the clean and harsh vocal slots, as Karli Romyn comes off as more of a clean cut yet powerful singer after Elize Ryd, whereas the shouts and barks of Diego Fernandez-Trujillo are a consistent Tomas Lindberg emulation. The consequential sound could be mistaken for a 90s beauty and the beast approach except the surrounding music is not doom metal or anything that could be described as atmospheric, but more a constant barrage of frenzied speed that can be best described as a nexus connecting power thrash with melodeath.

Apart from an extremely thin-sounding and fuzzy production that almost sounds like a b-side from a White Wizzard album, this band has their act together and delivers a consistent assault of blazing fury that never relents. Things start on something of an epic note with a short orchestral number with a militaristic feel, seguing into a blinding gust of agitated guitar work and an equally high-impact drum assault that almost sounds like it was lifted off as recent Immortal album that is "Take The Wheel". The aforementioned song is basically the best thing on here and sees the band throwing every trick in their bag at the listener, but there are some near equally strong showings on the slightly less frenzied speeder "Revenant" and the riff happy yet somewhat looser feeling "Dreamons". There is a slight sense of disconnect between the activity level of the guitar and drums versus the bass which gives things an occasionally uneven feel, which is further aggravated by the bass being a little too high in the mix, but it doesn't hit deal-breaker territory.

Coming from a band that is comprised of a mixture of newcomers and veterans, this is a fairly impressive result, though one that feels more like a rough draft than a finished product given some production flaws. As a portfolio of this band's potential, they show particular prowess in the live setting, as the closing song "Come Back In Glory" is about equally as effective as the studio songs. It's a bit more modern and extreme than a lot of the retro-heavy metal material that's been making waves in the past several years, notably by this band's former project Striker, which has made a name for itself in the early 80s revivalist camp of late, but it will probably have slightly more appeal to fans of said persuasion as it would those on the melodic death side of the fence that this album straddles. There are plenty more tales of battle and heroism to be told, and it wouldn't be a bad thing for some of them to be told by this band.