FIREFORCE — Deathbringer (review)

Album · 2014 · Power Metal

3/5 · 2014-06-12
adg211288

Deathbringer (2014) is the second full-length album by Belgian power metal act FireForce. It's been three years since the band released their debut album March On (2011) and there's been a few changes in the FireForce camp. Chief among them with the exception of vocalist Filip "Flype" Lemmens and guitarist Erwin Suetens the band has changed personnel. They have also moved to Limb Music GmbH from 7hard Records.

The music on Deathbringer is for the most part a fairly traditionally styled brand of melodic power metal but it does also feature some strong traditional heavy metal leanings, but again there's nothing really unusual about that in a band like this. The instrumentation is competently played, but having heard more than a few power metal albums by this point isn't anything so remarkable that it makes me sit up and take note. It has plenty of energy though which in my opinion is the main thing for an album like this. It's a rare power metal act who sound revolutionary in 2014 anyway. The lyrics are also the sort of thing you might expect, covering themes such as battles, metal itself and mythology (specifically Egyptian with tracks such as Anubis - Lord of the Dead and Sekhmet - Warrior Goddess featured on the album).

Compared to other such power metal bands my impression of Flype's vocal style is that he has a raw edge to his singing voice that in some places can also be considered at least semi-aggressive. That's not exactly uncommon in power metal either once you scratch the surface of the genre. After all you get bands like Germany's Grave Digger who have long promoted power metal in a much rawer and aggressive style than that found on Deathbringer, which compared to the music of the legendary German band is actually quite well polished on the production front, which is just how most fans of the European style branch of the power metal genre demand it.

I wasn't exactly sold on Flype's voice at first, but after a few listens to Deathbringer I have to say that he grew on me. So what I'm about to say really has nothing to do with his singing ability, but there are times during the album where it sounds as though FireForce wrote music that is crying out for the clean, melodic and epic singing more common to power metal, seeing as the music itself is up to that standard. Or perhaps it's not the vocals but the music that is crying out for more aggression to the playing, perhaps even some thrash metal elements. Either way, there are definite instances where Flype seems at odds with the rest of the band. It's the shouted backing vocals though that offer the real hindrance to my enjoyment of Deathbringer. They're really quite irritating.

Deathbringer is a fun enough power metal album but at the end of the day it isn't quite as memorable or addictive as I'd like an album of this style to be. In fact it's only three songs, the title track, Combat Metal and Anubis - Lord of the Dead that stick with me after playing the album and in the case of Combat Metal it's for the wrong reasons as it features heavy use of those shouted backing vocals I mentioned. Overall a 3 star seems fair though.