Ever get a craving for good, old-fashioned power metal? If you’re hungry for metal you might want to pick up HammerFall’s newest release, Threshold. The Swedish metal band has been around for over ten years, and they’re still dedicated to a pure metal sound. Joacim Cans’s gently screamed vocals are reminiscent of Geoff Tate from Queensrÿche. I’m fond of the band’s utterly cliché mascot, the bad-ass hammer wielding knight, wreathed in lightening, who appears on the cover of the album. The cover art promises unadulterated warrior metal pleasure, a promise the album certainly delivers on.
To listen to Threshold is to listen to album of a band that is comfortable with its identity and has solidified its sound. The band’s current members have been the same for about six years, a change from the often shifting line-up that occurred during the ‘90’s. Only one member of the band, Oscar Dronjak, remains from the original HammerFall. Dronjak plays one of the two guitars in the group. That two guitar styling is one of the elements that makes the HammerFall sound so epic.
From track one, you’ll be hearing metal with all the bells whistles and gimmicks that musicians have been playing with since metal was born. Track two gives us not only a mention of the devil and fire but a well-shouted background chorus. ‘Rebel Inside’ is probably the most notable of the many tracks that rely on the killer power guitar stylings HammerFall can bring to bear. The album keeps to the hard side of metal, even when it goes melodic. Expect plenty of fist pumping, song-titled shouted choruses. Solid musical talent backs the cliché strewn album.
Sometimes an object of derision, HammerFall isn’t exactly known for its originality and innovation. Nothing about that has changed. There isn’t anything in the album that challenges the conventions of metal music, but that’s precisely why it’s such a great album. Too many bands pretend to blaze a trail while never being completely comfortable with any sort of genre label. HammerFall doesn’t bother with the pretense. They don’t court the oft used whore of reinvention. As they say on their myspace page “The entire heavy metal decade of the Eighties” influences them. The group embraces their genre wholeheartedly and, in doing so, they conversely have more freedom to create a signature sound. If you are a metal devotee of ‘80’s music, you’ll find that it’s impossible not to enjoy this album, perhaps because it relies so heavily on standard metal formulas.
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