Now here’s a band that’s had a lengthy
career, “Jerusalem” not only marks
their 6th studio album but also their 10 year
anniversary together as a band. A decade put into
their career and quite a few successful tours
and festival appearances yet the band are still
overlooked and relatively unknown here in the
UK. The peak of my interest here is that having
done a bit of research there are a lot of comparisons
to Rainbow, especially the Dio-esque vocal comparisons.
Right from the word go with “Seventh Crusade”
we’re thrown straight into the deep end
with some crunchy heavy metal, these Dio comparisons
are all confirmed within 10 seconds of the song
starting. We have powerful songs with great riffs
and vocals as well as some underlying keyboards
to give it a fuller sound in “With A Strangers
Eye”, “The Day After Yesterday”
and “Child of Rock ‘n’ Roll”,
but we also have a couple of low tempo epics with
“The Battle of Jacobs Ford” and the
title track“Jerusalem”.
After these tracks the rest of the album is a
bit of a power metal fest that’s not quite
as great, the songs are lacking in power and catchy
little tweaks. I think if I had any advice it’d
be lay off using speed for the sake of it as their
lower tempo tracks and more heavy metal influenced
songs are the best in this collection. For anyone
who was a fan of Ronnie James Dio’s solo
work and is quite partial to power metal I would
highly recommend these guys.
3.5/5
Review by James Webb
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