Back in the early days of metal there was this band called Manowar and they played a style of music that few of us had heard at the time from an American metal band. They filled their albums with songs of warriors, defenders, if you will, that fought for their people and their lands. The albums were stacked with folklore and heroes and for the Dungeons and Dragons playing metal heads that we were; we ate this stuff up. Manowar was capable of giving to American metal kids something that had not been transported to the US from Europe yet. I still remember as a youth wondering why Manowar never really toured in the US as my friends and I loved this music. The answer, which I didn’t realize until many years later is that the fans in Europe already loved Manowar’s style of music as Power Metal was already proliferating Europe and the US fan base was a small fraction of what Europe could offer them.
Regardless of Manowar’s ability or inability to win a significant American audience as time has wore on many more American bands have taken up the mantle for American Power Metal. One of those bands is Washington, DC‘s Burning Shadows whose new album Gather, Darkness! is a solid addition to the American Power Metal world. The album based on the book of the same name by Fritz Lieber tells the tale of a post-apocalyptic world. The album is broken up into four separate parts with no breaks in the music as it moves along. There are slight tempo and mood swings that alert the listener to a different part of the story but overall it is a continuous story for the full 45ish minutes of music. What one would consider epic, I would think. This is a significant challenge for any band but one that I think comes off really well and deserves some attention from metal fans everywhere.
The album starts off with the appropriate instrumental/orchestral 'Overture: Hymn to Sathanas' that fits perfectly with what is to come from the first “act” of the story. After 'Overture: Hymn to Sathanas' the album blasts right into the story with the superb first act that begins with 'A New Dark Age'. When I first listened to this album I had to get used to the voice of Tom Davy as it is a more straight forward singing voice than I was prepared for in this type of music. It is not a bad voice by any stretch it was just cleaner than I have been used to lately and it kind of surprised me. As the album moves along through the remaining “acts” the influences of early American Power Metal are obvious through the galloping drums reminiscent of Manowar and even the NWOBHM sounds of Iron Maiden. But what makes Burning Shadow stand out and sound fresh is their ability to work the story and the music cohesively. They allow the story to stand on its own and add the appropriate mood for the listener to enjoy without over thinking. I find this approach refreshing as the temptation to get overly involved in the music has to be there but the fine musicians on this album flowed expertly with the story.
The album continues just as solidly throughout and as an American Power Metal fan I am really impressed with this (surprisingly) unsigned band from my area of the world. I think one of the issues has always been that the European audience has always had a bigger appreciation for this type of music than American fans, but believe me when I tell you that this album is solid from start to finish. No matter how you feel about the genre you have to be impressed with how ambitious this band has to be to even take on this project and to be able to do so solidly. From start to finish this album held my attention and it is solid enough to play over and over again and get more from the story each time. I love to escape in my metal and to escape in the story that Burning Shadows is telling in Gathering, Darkness! is a treat for this D&D nerd!
Until Later, Peace!
