The awesome HAMMER KING are set to release their brand new album on Friday. We checked out the previous one and loved it (check it out here), so knew we had to check this one out too! Without further ado, let’s dive right in!

The band explode straight into a HUGE song with ‘Hailed by the Hammer’. A massive riff opens it up, leading us into a heavy verse and pre before the massive chorus rings through, catchy and arena-filling. The band do their jobs exceptionally well, with Titan Fox V’s vocals being awesome while both his and Gino’s guitar riffing and soloing is a huge highlight of the track. The harmonies on the vocals through the choruses make it all sound huge, and it’s all going to be stuck in my head for the rest of the evening, guaranteed. It’s a great way to open the album and an easily playlisted song!

The pace and heaviness continues through another big personal favourite of mine, ‘The Devil Will I Do’. The riffing almost feels like thrash, or at least a heavy NWOBHM style. Meanwhile the powerful vocals keep it firmly grounded in… well… power metal. The chorus is another epic sounding one, filled with more huge backing vocals to help it fill out the sound. And it has another technically awesome guitar solo tucked in the middle of it, something the band do so damn well. It’s another song that I can’t pick fault with, and the second out of two so far to make it onto our Spotify!

The title track, and the subsequent four tracks, are all similar to the previous ones. None of them are bad at all, but they all kinda blended into a big noise of generally good power metal. Nothing stood out across the entire half an hour enough to write about, sadly. I certainly didn’t hate listening to them, but none are highlights.

‘Kings of Arabia’ was my next standout track. Y’all know how much of a sucker for an Egyptian riff. It almost has an Iron Maiden feel to it than anything else, with the riffing and vocal melody all being awesome and being very Dickinson and Harris. Everything about this track is amazing too, and very much reminded me why I love this band after a few average tracks. The guitaring, drumming and vocals were all sick. It’s definitely another playlisted track!

‘I want Chaos’ returns to the similar tropes mentioned before. However, the closer, ‘Gates of Atlantia’, is proggy awesomeness. While most of it maintains the Maiden-esque power metal, the drop down into acoustic stuff in he middle was nice, as was the extended, epic outro. It’s an incredible way to close an album, especially one of this stature and magnitude. And it’s another awesome song, and the perfect way to close things out!

Overall: This was kinda a mixed bag. None of it we bad, don’t get me wrong. But it definitely feels like a good portion of it are album tracks. There are some incredible songs that I’ll be listening to a lot going forward, while a few fade into the background pretty quick. Still, it’s a good album, and if you’re into power metal I’m sure you’ll love this! It’s not quite as good as their previous album though, sadly. Still…

The score: 7.5/10