siLLy puPPy With heavy galloping guitar riffs right out of the 80s came Victoria, BC’s answer to 80s power metal for a new millennium leaving no influential rock unreturned and shamelessly tethering it to their underbellies to unleash the anthem metal fury of a time gone by. While heavily fortified with every New Wave Of British Heavy Metal sound possible with Maiden-esque guitar gallops, dungeon and dragon fantasies of early Dio, US power metal gusto reminding me of Brocas Helm or Manilla Road, the feisty band 3 INCHES OF BLOOD meant business taking their passion for the art to points of well…. ridiculousness!

Forming in 1999 and unleashing their debut BATTLECRY UNDER A WINTER SUN in 2002, the band quickly found a newfound niche in cleverly crafting their NWOBHM approach with the unexpected lo-fi production values and occasional demon shrieking of black metal courtesy of the duo vocal machines of Jamie Hooper who handles the demon parts and Cam Pipes who does his best intermediate version of Rob Halford and King Crimson.

The duo succeed in screaming their throats out as the duo guitar attack and bass and drum punishment tackle the epic battles in fantasy lands worshipping everything 80s epic with a more darkened image update in a punkish black metal lo-fi approach. Approaching this album left me with a less than lackluster expectation as this band seems to get little respect, is rated rather poorly and after all, hasn’t there been enough genuine metal from the 80s without a need for nostalgic retread?

Well, lo and behold i was quite surprised how easily i digested this little raucous romp through the feisty curiosos as they channeled the greats of yesteryear. While this is hardly the most original amalgamation of sounds ever composed it certainly has a decent entertainment value as it brings to mind various great bands of the past but yet doesn’t sound exactly like any of them.

Pockmarked with pummeling speed and power metal gallops, 3 INCHES OF BLOOD’s debut album is a retro stampede into the world of Orcs, chaotic thrones and blazing fires. Laced with addictive riffs and screaming dueling vocalists often rendered audibly inseparable, BATTLECRY UNDER THE WINTER SUN is a surprisingly listenable journey into the retro promised lands that deliver all the expected skeletal onslaughts and curses of lighthouse keepers.

Vim Fuego An Edward J. Repka album cover is generally a good sign for an album. His work has appeared on the cover for some of the biggest names in Metal, like Megadeth, Nuclear Assault and Death. Add 3 Inches of Blood to that illustrious list.

Despite being on Roadrunner, the choice of the nu-generation, 3 Inches of Blood deal in metal. ‘Advance and Vanquish’ loads up all the old school metal bases, with obvious debts to Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Manowar, Mercyful Fate/King Diamond, and touches of more recent bands like Blind Guardian and their Germanic power metal compatriots.

Dual vocalist bands are generally the domain of insano-grindcore bands where it takes two vocalists to keep up with the music, or lame black metal bands, where the bass player’s lard assed gothic girlfriend warbles along, annoying and tuneless. 3 Inches of Blood use the extra vocalist differently, in that he genuinely is a second singer and not just a bit part player. The dual voices of Cam Pipes and Jamie Hooper play off one another, nicely complementing each other. While one is an almost traditional power metal voice, the other is a harsh screeched thrash style. It allows for more flexibility than a dual voiced single vocalist, helping to create a feel of violence and conflict, and tells two parts of a story. Oddly, there is not a lot of harmonising, even though it would fit some of the material.

3 Inches of Blood live in a world of magic and legend, bloody conflicts and mystical creatures without a single hint of irony or embarrassment. Songs like ‘Destroy the Orcs’ and ‘Swordmaster’ sit comfortably alongside ‘Wykydtron’ (“In the year four thousand fifty five, Wykydtron came alive”) and ‘Crazy Nights’ (“Hammersmith is calling me!”). OK, so it’s not rocket science or brain surgery, it’s mostly medieval type Dungeons and Dragons style fantasy. It’s pure sword wielding, dragon slaying escapism.

Musically, 3 Inches of Blood lean toward the Dragonforce-style high speed, low subtlety type of power metal. There is no room for weepy Rhapsody-style ballads. There’s a distinct thrash influence, particularly in the guitar attack, and it rears its head in pretty much every song. The rhythm section is competent enough, but this isn’t really about them. It’s all about the power of the riff and thy mighty sword.

‘Advance and Vanquish’ isn’t exactly ground breaking, but it is refreshing enough to stand out from the crowd, even without the two vocalist gimmick. Songs like ‘Deadly Sinners’, the future fantasy ‘Wykydtron’, ‘Crazy Nights’ and ‘Destroy the Orcs’ stand out as short, sharp punches against the epics, like the ‘Upon The Boiling Sea’ trilogy and ‘Dominion of Deceit’. There is enough to interest fans of power metal, traditional metal and possibly the odd thrasher. ‘Advance and Vanquish’ is a busy little album which lends itself to numerous repeat listening.

Warthur I was very impressed when 3 Inches of Blood took on a few select themes from extreme metal when working on Fire Up the Blades, resulting in a sort of blackened traditional metal which I thought was genuinely original and interesting. It's disappointing, then, that on Here Waits Thy Doom they chose to play it safe and retreat to traditional metal territory - to my ears it even sounds as though Cam Pipes is reigning in his shrieking vocals a little. For a band which to this point had always managed to be about a little more than the mere indulgence of nostalgia, I expect better.

Warthur Whilst phrases like "lineup changes" and "new musical direction" might cause music fans to wince and fret for the future of their favourite bands, in the case of 3 Inches of Blood these changes actually seem to have done a world of good. Fire Up the Blades was, the band admit, the result of them listening to a whole lot of black metal, and whilst the group don't turn their backs on their essentially traditional metal/NWOBHM-influenced sound, they incorporate a number of ideas from black metal into their music and ramp up the speed and brutality of their music to create an intriguing hybrid. (Blackened NWOBHM?)

Lyrically speaking, the band are still the enthusiastic fantasy nerds we know and love; the changes are mainly in the music, particularly in the furiously loud and fast-paced drumming courtesy of Alexei Rodriguez and the way the band use Jason Hooper's screamed vocals. Though at first I didn't like it as much as the gloriously nostalgic Advance and Vanquish, now it's become my favourite 3 Inches of Blood album - most importantly, it shows the band being willing to grow and develop their sound beyond catering to mere nostalgia. Purists might turn their noses up at the band's willingness to incorporate appropriate ideas from extreme metal into their music, but I for one think the band showed a lot of smarts in choosing precisely which lessons they'd take from black metal and what sort of thing they would leave to the corpsepainted experts.

Time Signature Metal woman...

Genre: traditional metal / speed metal

"Long Live Heavy Metal" is a very appropriate title, indeed; this is an all out hävy metöl album that captures all good things about the metal of the 80s.

With a deliberately retrospective approach, which indeed pervades all things 3 Inches of Blood, the Canadian metallers deliver the goods in the form of 12 metal-as-fuck. For instance, "Metal Woman" is comparable to early Running Wild and Judas Priest, while "Leave it on the Ice" and "My Sword Will Not Sleep" are all-out speed metal songs, and "Die for Gold (Upon the Boiling Sea IV)" is more of an old school thrasher akin to early Exodus. A song like "Leather Lord" sounds - perhaps unsurprisingly - very Painkiller-inspired (could it even a song about Rob Halford himself?). Featuring galloping guitars, noodling guitar harmony figures, ripping riffage and pounding drums, the tracks on the album are, to make a long story short, pretty much the epitome of high quality retro metal. "Man of Fortune", which, for my money, is probably the best track on the album, really summarizes the whole album pretty well, even adding a Manowar-esque sense of epicness in the bridge and also offers an epic power metal-style chorus.

One of the main attractions is Cam Pipes' vocals. His screaming and screechy singing style is as always an acquired taste, but if you dig Rob Halford's style on "Painkiller", then should Cam Pipes should click right away - I, for one, loves his voice.

If you like good old fashioned heavy metal music with all the bells and whistles - including texts about swords, sorcery, epic battles, and terrors of the seven seas terror - then you should not hesitate to purchase 3 Inches of Blood's "Long Live Heavy Metal".