“I Will Fight” quickly indicates the sort of album Night Stealer is. It opens with very little pretense, with rolling drums ramping straight into the first verse featuring an entertaining lead riff and wailing vocals. Savaged are, unsurprisingly for the style, oriented strongly around their riffs which are largely a satisfying blend of crunchy and groovy. The vocals move between higher wails and lower croons with a bluesy touch, with appropriate harmonization to beef up choruses. A speedy, shredding guitar solo also caps the first minute of the album. I admire the immediacy of a band that squeezes these elements into direct songwriting. Though the songs broadly fit into an 80s blend of heavy and speed metal, “Knights of Metal” sounds particularly indebted to Iron Maiden who lend influence. And rounding out the sound, the production is pleasingly unremarkable. Unnoticed production constitutes good production. Savaged don’t make music designed to make you think; it’s designed to facilitate beer and moshing.
The opening minute to Night Stealer, and the overall style used, is what makes the second half of “I Will Fight,” and most other tracks, so surprising. This track continues for nearly 6 minutes with an extended instrumental passage after its second chorus. A fresh, shredding lead bleeds into a fresh, shredding solo before the music cuts back into a quiet, twinkling passage of synths. It’s only a tapping hi-hat and distant guitar whining that slowly brings the song back. This passage between choruses occupies nearly half the song, and it’s not the only song adopting this approach. It’s unexpected in what initially seems a very straightforward slab of 80s worship. Admittedly, these extended passages give the band room to show off some instrumental creativity and songwriting dynamism. “Elm Street” boasts the best of them, developing its epic vocal hook with rhythmic “oohs” and “ahhs,” a cool chromatic lead, and a frantic solo.
However, these passages are also a symptom of a tendency to extend what should be three to four-minute songs into five to six-minute ones. I admire subverting audience expectations, but I more strongly admire tight songwriting. Savaged’s best quality is their snappy guitar leads but only the title track features leads used as briefly as they should be, being the only main song shorter than four minutes. A few of the remainder fall into a consistent rhythm of being too long and featuring a lengthy instrumental passage without justifying it. It feels like the band have a choice ahead to either double-down on these into something stranger and more experimental – thus justifying their length – or chopping them down for brevity and directness. A more satisfying way through may also be to feature a more balanced blend of shorter and longer tracks. The longer songs would be better distinguished, and the structure may feel less repetitive if shorter tracks were cut across them.
I value brevity and directness in speedy music like Night Stealer. That’s why I clicked with Savaged on first listen. But the track lengths as the album develops get in the way. It’s not exactly a musical Kafka for intricacy and complexity but by “Running for Your Love (Tonight)” at the end, I feel some fatigue. Clearly, a classic metal style can sustain an entire album’s worth of material but not when I have the reservations that I do. Night Stealer is consistently good but only inconsistently more than that. My eyes and ears nonetheless remain open to future releases.
Rating: 3.0/5.0
DR: 6 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps
Label: No Remorse Records
Websites: facebook.com/savaged | savaged.bandcamp.com
Releases Worldwide: January 26th, 2024
