Artist: Thunderstone
Title: Dirt Metal
Type: Album
Label: SPV
It is tempting to split this review into two and judge it based on the music compared to vocal performance, as there is little doubt that the addition of Rick Altzi (At Vance) on vocals is what makes this in any way special at all. His vocal textures boost all the songs from mundane to decent heavy/power tunes. After the intro, “I Almighty” kicks in with a US styled power metal riff with plenty of bass kick added for energy. The song is accessible power metal but without the warbling vocals, though I disliked the keyboard sound within it. The title track has modern metal flair but I did expect something a lot faster considering the song title. “Blood That I Bleed” has Evergrey stamped on it as Rick lets loose his powerful larynx at every opportunity. The band incorporates decent leads in all the songs and if anything are a little safe overall but very listenable. “Ghosts Of Youth” had me scribbling Metallica subconsciously before “Counting Hours” unleashes a mild thrash riff to perk my attention a little as the song borders 90s Priest in places such is the pace and catchy melody.
“Dodge The Bullet” has the first signs of any kind of speed on the album and is, again, considerably like Priest, but the keyboard hook is just plain weird unfortunately, but is still by far the best song to this speed freak writers ears. The problem overall with the vast majority of this is the plodding pace of the songs which fail to hook you and reel you in despite the attempts at creating an album of catchy metal tunes. I desperately wanted to enjoy this album but it failed to materialise due to the similarity of the songs. An occasional injection of pace would have made this album lunge out of mediocrity but instead it resides in the albums that also ran in 2010 and without the vocals of Rick Altzi this would have been totally forgettable. On a positive note anybody into straight modern heavy metal with no frills or sub genre poisoning will enjoy this. Check it out if you’re into Evergrey, milder Iced Earth, Cage, etc as you’ll probably like it a lot.
http://www.thunderstone.org
http://www.myspace.com/thunderstoneband
