Black Bubbling Ooze

Extra! Extra! (Read all about it) Stockholm's starkly reproached poster-child for blatant Iron Maiden emulation has, thanks to its latest and fourth full-length release, rocketed beyond simple idolatry and/or puerile, fawning worship. Duly, it's my duty to wax celestial and "star"-struck, insofar as Starblind's wickedly mellifluous, yet oddly titled, Black Bubbling Ooze is concerned. (BP, Exxon and Shell, be damned!)

Of highest import, its sheer level of melodic symmetry and beautiful twin guitar harmony - both rhythm and lead-wise, atop a fluidly roving, "NWOBHM" styled battery (for which team Steve Harris/Nicko McBrain exult, to point of teary-eyed humility and fatherly pride) - practically surpass iconic, Bruce D. helmed Maiden bedrock foundations such as Number of the Beast ('82), Powerslave ('84), Somewhere in Time ('86) and, for want of said British 'blazers' final halcyon days achievement, Seventh Son of a Seventh Son ('88)...

Reckless, bold claim, notwithstanding, BB Ooze also represents a massive, if not radically unprecedented, step-up from 2017's rocky, gelid, mediocre and stranded third effort, Never Seen Again - itself a far-flung, extreme improvement over Swedish quintet's Darkest Horrors and Dying Son, premier and secondary, however weakly prosaic, hors d' oeuvres. (A fellow, none-too-sallow colleague, hereabouts, once threw them the proverbial book.)

Opener "One of Us" descends from the heavens in a chromatic-ally catchy and ensnaring "King of Twilight" fashion, immediately hinting of glad, not to mention classy and chivalrous, tidings, which, suffice it to say, blossom at breakneck pace throughout next pair of hyper-palatable starters: "At The Mountains of Madness", lyrically, an Iron Heade-with-touch-of-"Where Eagles Dare" assimilating steady grinder whose eponymously ringing refrain surely arrests all and sundry in their un-paved, cobblestone laid paths. Bedazzling, spectral corruscations ensue further within flash-in-the-gland, as well as naturally Maiden-esque, "Here I Am". Its super smooth, slickly syndicated/syncopated "usurper" solos, of which are long lasting and downright combustible, flesh out the album's majorly memorable/replay-able lower tier in grandstanding manner, to slay the Beast!

Bringing my jubilant tone down a notch, clean-up batting pseudo-ballad/quintessential soft spot, "Crystal Tears", glides forth with placidly un-distorted, "crystal-clear" progressive guitar picking, to vocally languid tune of front clansman Marcus' markedly Anglican sounding mid/top range before speeding up, about two minutes in, as the bass & drums set fabled table down for ax-men's scorpion-like strike of a ferocious, impeccably phrased lead break sure to knock a few waning keisters out of mind and gourds, what!

Yours truly's preferred track scoops up relay baton with top, longest, farthest star light "The Man of the Crowd", a tightly woven, winning star-ship trooper of a song kicking (perhaps three) doors down, by way of powerful bojangling, haranguing, gripping bass, red carpet roller of a richly classic, minor keyed dual guitar riff and, last but nary least, our esteemed bellower's killer tonal elocution, buoyed as it is by seasoned grace and unflappable stamina. 'Tis far cry from Boreal outfit's humbled, even jumbled, beginnings. (Picture a doe morphing into something between a gnu and a ram, and we're golden.)

Onwards, ever valiantly, this Summer of 2020 contender glides, cooly and brilliantly, in wake of Carcass reminiscent (in dystopia themed caption) "Room 101", yet another, back-to-back humdinger worth mulling over. To wit, its upper pitched choral resplendence, frantic drum prattle and piercing, red-hot soloing geyser spouts in same way as genre staples "Fatal Attack", by London's presently tame Monument, or capital hit by Blackslash, "Rock N Roll", from several moons ago. Token epic, and longest, next-to-last "The Reckoning", takes a mild, perhaps welcome and anthemic - not anemic - back-seat, still in congruous (Maginot) line with its frostily shadowed brethren, whilst galloping, gang-crowed closer, "The Young Man", appoints ideal bookend to otherwise "stellar" performance on behalf of this bold gathering of heady musical risers/riders.

Issued on final day of July, under Germany's Pure Steel Records (grandpa to Alltheniko, Ancilotti, Cloven Hoof, Primitai and Toledo Steel), Starblind's apotheosis - despite baffling, petrol evoking name - shines, in similar new wave of traditional heavy metal glory as Blackslash's Lightning Strikes Again ('18), Forensick's The Prophecy ('18), Monument's Renegades ('14) and, more recently, Screamer's Highway of Heroes ('19). Evidently, fans of these precious jewels owe it to themselves, along with their Greensleeves, to screen Black Bubbling Ooze...for impurities, although it's doubtful any fine comb-toothed raid proves successful.