Mean Streak – ‘Metal Slave’ (Black Lodge Records)
CD Reviews
Written by David Whistance
Saturday, 24 October 2009 14:27
It’s time once more to wipe down your leathers, dust down those studded wrist bands and polish your bullet belts and submit yourself to ‘Metal Slave’ the debut album from Swedish power metallers Mean Streak.
Move over Primal Fear, there is a new power metal band on the block….and boy, do they mean business!
My attention is quickly drawn to the album cover art, a sexy alluring demon wielding a battle-axe in each hand whilst only a skull hides her modesty. Classic ‘sexy’ stuff that never did Manowar any harm, did it? The back sleeve reveals a photograph of the band looking as though they had just raided Rob Halford’s ‘British Steel’ stage clothes, standing proud in their heavy metal uniforms.
The album opens with a rip roaring ‘Whom The Gods Love Die Young’, a power metal triumph setting the pace for us soon to be metal slaves. Quickly entering ‘Battle Within’ as not only do they beat their battle of inner demons but also slay the Nu Metal beast as they advance rapid fire.
Each song on ‘Metal Slaves’ is a well constructed Heavy Metal piece de resistance and, as a band, Mean Streak are not afraid to wear their influences on their pyramid studded sleeves, dipping into the likes of Maiden, Saxon, Priest and Accept, to bring home the musical bacon.
I would even go as far as saying that I could hear a touch of one of my all time favourite vocalist (before he sadly turned his back on the genre) ex-Helloween frontman Michael Kiske on ‘Carved In Stone’.
Mean Streak rather admirably manage to stay well clear of being a pastiche, just by being a Heavy Metal band proud of its influences whilst also stamping their own identity where it belongs. Mean Streak may reside in Sweden but in their heads there is only one place they want to be and that is ‘Rock City’, a massive singalong number that will go down in a storm in the live arena. ‘Sin City Lights’ meanwhile is a huge Scorpions style affair, and an equally fantastic slab of melodic Heavy Metal. Final track ‘Sinner And Saints’ is a gigantic number that concludes an all-conquering Heavy Metal classic of an album.
After listening to ‘Metal Slaves’ in all its thunderous glory, I now submit myself to the Metal 
Gods as I stand in awe and become a Metal Slave, want to join me?