NOW!TRUE ENG…
We all know you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. But when a record turns up on your desk bearing the kind of artwork you’d find on a gothic market stall t-shirt, you can make a pretty good guess at what the music contained beneath the hooded, scythe-wielding Grim Reaper on the front.
The album in question is Birmingham rockers Nightblade’s album ‘Servant to Your Lair’. It’s a record that offers little in the way of surprises from the moment you pick it up; brittle, brash guitars, hard-rock solo-orientated, lyrics laden with shadowy clichés.
There’s no shortage of passion, you can hand that to them on a plate, and the technical work, especially in the staccato thrashing of the strings, is unquestionably good. However, when the music is so predictable and transparent, it’s likely to be truly enjoyed only by the same subculture of metal fans as the ones that produced it; mature rockers who were taken by the visceral magic of seventies heavy metal, and have never quite given it up.
1. Helloween
2. Suspended Reality
3. Under the Streetlights
4. Jekyll & Hyde
5. No Submission
6. When You Started From
7. Head of Steam
8. When Two Souls Collide
9. Your Shadow Behind
10. Servant to Your Lair
11. Relentlessly
12. Justified