Orange Goblin

A Eulogy for the Damned (Candlelight)
By Mike Delano

UK metal veterans Orange Goblin come out of the gate swinging on their first album in five years. “Red Tide Rising” punches with some hefty old-school force (I’m hard-pressed to find a better opening salvo than “Chaos is coming/kingdoms are falling/the planets collide in the sky”). It promises a full-on metal assault, and A Eulogy for the Damned certainly delivers on that promise. The highlights are numerous: The barroom swagger of “Stand for Something,”the Motörhead-influenced loser anthem “The Filthy and the Few,” and the proud cowbell breakdown in “Return to Mars.” Picking apart the tracks really doesn’t do Eulogy justice, though; this is an album that hangs together very well, and, much more so than its individual moments, you’ll remember being chased by this big boulder of rock that threatened to flatten you for a good 49 minutes.
(www.candlelightrecordsusa.com)