“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.
