A little hungover, a little tired, recovering from a great Sunday night show, let's do a review.
My band opened for Huntress last night (12-1-13). First things first: these are some seriously nice folks. We got to chat with them before and after their set, lovely people. They put on one hell of a rock show too.
After their set I grabbed a CD. Being the fanboy that I am, I got them all to sign it. Jill (Huntress' resident banshee) gave out free hugs. Fun.
You will be hard pressed to find a better power metal band than these guys, but they're not really power metal. I hate to try and make a subgenre out of it, it's just good metal to me. The kind of shit you want to roll dice and kill orcs to. You know what I'm talking about.
Their sound takes cues from bands like Iron Maiden, Manowar, Judas Priest, Tank, even some fucking Majesty. Jill has the theatrics to match their sound; live, it's like watching Candlemass in all their glory. Still, with this power-esque sound, they aren't an odd choice to play bills with bands of a more modern tendency, Mastodon comes to mind. In fact, they just got off tour with Lamb of God and Killswitch Engage, so yeah.
Song for song, this is one of the most bitchin' albums I've heard in a while, and I don't throw bitchin' around for no reason. I can imagine jousting a horde of werewolves, while driving a flaming Camaro, while listening to this.
I'm a slow listener, things usually take a bit to sink in. That said, one song immediately jumped out to me. It's called "I want to fuck you to death", oh, look, Lemmy wrote it for Huntress. How about that.
All in all, Starbound Beast is a fucking solid piece of work. This is what metal should be, at least in my books. Give it a go, folks.
--Headshot
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