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So, according to the anecdotal press clipping, Henning Pauly – prog-metal luminary, all-around nice guy, scourge of Sebastian Bachs everywhere – decides to cut loose and record a full-on ‘80s record with guests from his Chain project after being inspired by tunes of old on his car stereo. The result, as expected, falls somewhere in between sincerity, anachronism and plain ol’ slumming. “A Dragon Shall Come,” “Darkness Comes to Light,” “All Hail the Warrior” and “No Metal Son of Mine,” for example, strike all the appropriate classic metal postures with great vocals belting inane lyrics and, for the most part, work amiably. On the other hand, “A Slave to Metal” should really have been titled “A Slave to AOR,” so indebted is it to the Frontiers record label, er, frontier. The underlying problem of that song and too much of this record, from the title on down, is that it invokes the wrong side of eighties metal, i.e. Dokken and lighter as opposed to Dokken and heavier. As a result, a ten-minute behemoth named “Kingdom of the Battle Gods” ought to sound like Manowar but winds up sounding like Magnum. Not bad at all, but not metal. Clearly, I’m not presuming that Henning’s agenda needs to accommodate my own hopes for the album with deference and precision, but I might have warmed to it with a bit more overtly hard stuff, a less antiseptic production and fewer gimmicky power ballads. Then again, given the downward artistic and sonic trajectories of Priest, Scorps, Accept and Saxon back in those disingenuously “good old days,” perhaps this is more authentically eighties than I care to admit.
| Tracklist |
| 1. A Dragon Shall Come 04:55 |
| 2. A Slave to Metal 05:51 |
| 3. Midnight Sky Masquerade 06:49 |
| 4. Goodnight Boston 04:42 |
| 5. Darkness Comes to Light 04:34 |
| 6. A Beast Abandoned 04:51 |
| 7. I Will Never Ever Stop 04:27 |
| 8. All Hail The Warrior 04:57 |
| 9. Kingdom of the Battle Gods 10:05 |
| 10. Spirit of the Elvis 03:39 |
| 11. No Metal Son of Mine 06:46 |
| 12. Out of Control 03:54 |
| 13. Midnight Sky Masquerade (Acoustic) 06:29 |
: 71:53
| Buy other Shadow's Mignon albums |
