“I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little afraid of picking up the new Crystal Viper. Having never let me down, the band’s 2019 release, Tales of Fire and Ice, was truly disappointing. In fact, it’s so disappointing, that after three-to-four spins, I erased it from my computer and threw out the review I was writing. Sadly, its only mention was as a 2019 Disappointment o’ the Year. So, yeah, I was a little worried.” Cult is just another word for family.
“Savage Master is a throwback super-retro metal act who seek to recreate the early 80s heavy metal sound, mixing classic NWoBHM ideas with Warlock and early American acts like Bitch. I was quite taken with their 2016 outing With Whips and Chains and admired their straightforward and catchy metal anthems. Fast forward to 2019 and the AMG routing protocols dumped their third album Myth, Magic and Steel on my desk ov…metal.” No plod, no masters.
![Satan’s Hallow – Satan’s Hallow [Things You Might Have Missed 2017]](https://www.angrymetalguy.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/a2128778736_10-768x768.jpg)
“While there’s no arguing that the terms “retro” and “revivalist” are absolutely appropriate when describing certain acts, they tend to feel a little reductive to me, diminishing a band’s efforts as little more than a novelty. Sometimes facts are facts, however, and Chicago’s Satan’s Hallow are undoubtedly retro yet unequivocally awesome, having dropped the best classic metal record of the year.” Let’s go down to the Metal Revival and find ourselves religion.
“As soon as I heard note one of this thing I knew I was in for it. I’d end up falling in my 80s nostalgia hole preaching to the very small choir of 45-plus geezers who grew up on this kind of raw, simplistic proto-metal. Praising this would inevitably lead to abuse from my youthful AMG peers and readers while further cementing my rep as a metallic fossil, but what can a middle-aged Steel Druhm do?” My name is Steel and I have a metal problem.
Get back in your skull tank(ard)!
