By Monk
If there’s one record company upon whom you can rely to deliver the sort of music their name suggests then it is the German label Pure Steel, who specialize in (mostly) no nonsense, straight ahead heavy metal of the traditional kind – the sort that gets you banging your head and air guitaring around your living room like a six-year old who has just consumed an entire bag of jelly babies (and, believe me, having seven grandchildren, I know exactly what that is like). The latest exemplar of this predictive approach is this, the comeback album from Floridian old school graduates Attika.
The quartet were originally active for around a decade in the late-Eighties and early-Nineties, producing two albums – their self-titled 1988 debut and 1991’s ‘When Heroes Fall’ – before, like so many bands of that era, finding themselves falling by the wayside and having to give up their dreams of heavy metal stardom. However, again like so many of their contemporaries, they found a second wind in their collective and individual middle ages and decided to give it another go, undertaking their first foray onto European soil at the end of the last decade – a trip which resulted in them hooking up with the Pure Steel guys, who subsequently last year re-issued their aforesaid second album, which garnered enough interest to prompt them to get their sagging arses back into a studio to see if they could rekindle that old magic.
And, they certainly have done that, as the opening, title track is as declarative statement as you will hear, driven by a gigantic thrumming bass line and cohesive percussive rhythm, over-topped by a heavily Priest-ish guitar attack and genre-typical clean vocal snarl, which sets the mood for what is to come over the remaining nine tracks.
In many ways, ‘Metal Lands’ is an affectionate look over its creators’ shoulders, steeped as it is in the memories of the era in which they first dipped their feet into the heavy metal mire. This is perhaps best exemplified in some of the lyrics on the retrospective second track, ‘8 Track Days’ (an era-evoking title in itself), on which lines like “I remember all the good times like I remember the bad”, “you can’t turn back the clock” and “days seem to repeat, bad case of déjà vu” uttered, Halford-style, over a laconic, staccato riff.
If you’re looking for one of those fancy-dancy whiddly-diddly “modern” metal albums, then this most definitely will not be your horn of mead. If, however, you yearn for the days when heavy metal was all about how sore your neck was after listening to the album, then you’ll be sipping deep from this particular cup. ‘Metal Lands’ is one of those albums that delivers exactly what it promises. A selection of good old-fashioned, no-nonsense, fist-pumping and horn-raising heavy metal tunes with no airs or graces about them. There is no unnecessary OTT guitar wankery or needless floweriness, just a precise focus on delivering the goods (sic) old school style.
- ‘Metal Lands’ is released today (Friday 26 February). You can get your copy HERE.
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