Like it or not, it’s a fact that on the whole, heavy metal prides itself on being formulaic. Try and deviate from the tried and tested formula employed by the Maiden’s and Priest’s and all of their many, many clones and your band will be met with the same old tired cries of “untrue” and “not metal” and all of that nonsense. So to expect any band that claims to be heavy metal to sound original would just be stupid. So then, it goes without saying that Alexis are doing nothing that I haven’t heard several hundred times before. It’s nothing particularly unique, hardly very imaginative, and certainly not groundbreaking.
Yet for all my cynicism, I quite like this. It has power. It has conviction. It has a fiery passion rising from it’s collective belly. If being original was all there was to music, then there would be a vast shortage of bands and certainly no scenes as such would develop. There’s a lot to be said for being generic. Sure, there are the bands that just take the formula and put no real feeling into what they are doing, but then you get the likes of Alexis who take that formula and really give it their all and it’s their passion that really comes across on this album. The introduction really brings you to approach the album with a sense of intrigue before ‘Shadows’ bursts in with some razor sharp guitars. There’s very much a progressive feel to this one and it’s not straight ahead riffing, stopping for a breather with a slow paced atmospheric chorus. As things move on there’s a neo-classical slant to the guitars that race forth with fervour and there’s some highly competent solos too.
‘Birds Of Prey’ adopts a much doomier slant with some slow, heavy guitars that strike with a real formidable force. With its mid-paced guitars this one really cooks up a dark and mysterious atmosphere and the vocals are particularly good here; really meaty and with an almost grungy edge to the delivery. Overall there’s a great deal of power to Freddy Alexis’ voice and he certainly walks the walk so to speak. ‘Metallizer Pt.2’ (What happened to part one?) impresses with it’s scything, speeding riffs although it’s impossible to ignore the fact that this sounds like it belongs on a Judas Priest Album. Here Freddy boy sounds more Halford than Halford and I can’t help but wonder if he’s been possessed by the spirit of the leath-clad metal god himself. YAAAAAAAAAAWWWW!
At just under 40 minutes this is short and sweet, and it appears that four of the tracks are bonuses too. There’s the token ballad ‘Without You’ which isn’t a bad effort, and the more ballsy and very retro sounding ‘Witchblade.’ Production on this album is solid enough and does the music the justice it deserves. This may not be anything original, but it has all the right ingredients for a solid heavy/power metal release.
http://www.myspace.com/birdsofpreychile
