“I love Teutonic power metal. I love how basically every band sounds like Gamma Ray or Blind Guardian in varying degrees, as well as their wocalists’ perpetual inability to pronounce the phoneme v. There’s a comfort to be found in the formula; lucky me, then, that Germany tends to produce a greater ratio of quality power metal bands than most other regions. Thornbridge is a prime example of such quality.” Unweash the wengeance!
“Hello, reader—can I call you reader? Let’s be honest with each other. You know exactly what to expect here. You know what kind of music this is; you know what this review is going to say; you do not need to skip to the end to know what score is coming. Even if you don’t know that the former vocalist for Gloryhammer Thomas Winkler has, since his dramatic departure from the group, started up anew with a Europe-spanning band called Angus McSix, even if you didn’t know that Gloryhammer and Winkler are well-known for their cheesy, over-the-top tales of fantasy, even if you haven’t glanced down and noticed that the preview song on Bandcamp for Angus McSix and the Sword of Power is called “Laser-Shooting Dinosaur,” you know.” Six appeal.
“For the last 6 months or so it seemed as if the AMG promo sump was almost entirely composed of one-man basement dwelling black metal outfits and black-adjacent endeavors of dubious merit. Perhaps that’s a reflection on the zeitgeist of our current pandemic-burdened existence, but it gets extremely tedious for those not big on the dark arts of low-fi aural destruction. Paradoxically there’s been a dire paucity of power metal just when we need that genre’s buoyant, cheese-fueled charm the most. Perhaps that explains why I found myself looking forward to Orden Ogan’s seventh album more than I expected.” Ogan donors.
“Ah, an unheralded, unsigned power metal band from Finland. Experience tells me this will either be disastrously bad or shocking good. The craptacular cover art suggests the former, as does the fact that GardensTale claimed the promo then promptly hurled it back in the promo muck before running into the night like a cowardly shirker. Steel fears no power known to man nor beast, so this shall be reviewed nonetheless!” Lore-core.
“No, it’s not Orden Ogan’s Gunmen: Part Two, but we’ve got another European power metal band going full-bore American west on us. This time around, it’s a lesser-known Italian power metal act by the name of Spellblast, which is well known to me for its release of a pair of strong, if rather unkempt, albums in 2007’s Horns of Silence and 2010’s Battlecry. In 2014, the band executed a crowdfunding campaign (which I contributed to) for its third studio album entitled Nineteen, which was based on Stephen King’s Dark Tower saga. Unfortunately, despite having the band’s best vocal performance, Nineteen suffered from some serious redundancy and creative regression, caused in part by lineup changes and a new preoccupation with “western themes,” which were much less apparent then than now. No longer presenting a fantastical front, Of Gold and Guns is simply an homage to the characters of the American old west.” Spent bullets and dead horses.
“Now here’s something you don’t see every day: a beefy-sounding Brazilian power metal act with no prior label releases appearing on a label as prominent as AFM. Armored Dawn is a sextet of South Americans who sound and write more like they hail from Germany or Scandinavia. With a certain preoccupation for Viking “lore” — just like half of all of metal — the band’s theme is nothing to write home about, but the album trailer sounded promising enough that I was eager to get my hands on this.” Viking lore or bore?
“In a year when two bands already dropped ill-conceived wild west themed albums with naturally disastrous results, well-respected Germanic power metallers, Orden Ogan choose to ride into Devil’s Gulch on a white horse. And cheese followed with them. Gunmen is the bands unusual follow up to 2015s slick, enjoyable Ravenhead opus, trading in their armor and axes for six shooters, pemmican and saddle sores.” Mamma, don’t let your Euro-power grow up to be cowboys.
“Given AMG and Steel Druhm’s well-documented love for power metal (Sonata Arctica, Riot, Edguy), it’s difficult to claim high profile names within the genre for review. The reviews I just linked were all within the last eight months, and 2015 alone has already seen well-received releases from Blind Guardian, Angra and Orden Ogan. Aside from demonstrating the corrupt poseurs masquerading as our leaders, this leaves us meager staff writers scraping the bottom of the power metal barrel…” Did El Cuervo just call the Metal Tribunal corrupt? That’s a paddlin’ offense.
“Orden Ogan has a name that greatly irritates me, but they’ve been a positive force in Euro-power over the years with semi classics like Vale, Easton Hope and the very respectable To The End. What I always enjoyed about them was how effectively they could fuse the vintage sounds of countrymen Rage and Blind Guardian into something enjoyable and at least partially unique.” Love the player, hate the name. That’s just how it goes sometimes.
Who doesn’t like Blind Guardian and Rage? Orden Ogan sure as hell does, as their new opus ably demonstrates. Its rich, creamy German power metal all day long on To the End and there are enough layered vocal harmonies here to choke a white whale! That means there are lots!
