Part Heart power ballad, part Mötley Crüe “Kickstart my Heart” wild-eyed shot-pounder. If you thought stripper rock was dead, you haven’t been paying attention.
Not as he-man thrash as Alien or SYL, more of a rule-breaker, which is what made City such a proud (and arguably unlistenable) creative moment in the extreme.
A raw brand of metal butchery. The band couples Eyehategod’s urgent brutality with intricate, catchy guitars, especially on “Bastard Son” and “Throne of Lies.”
If you like your Blind Guardian-esque metal without the swooping highs and lows and feats of derring-do, then look to the cheeky audacity of Savage Circus.
Given his Dimmu-ship as well as a multitude of Old Man’s Children, somehow the reticent black star rising finds time to boil and toil another swirling brew.
A new level of maturity. There’s a cohesion here, a rounding of the sharp prog edges into a massive and moving, mostly mid-paced and slow-end-of-fast thrash.