Label: Rock Of Angels Records
Release date: 04/28/2019
Length: 41:05 min.
Production: Steve Katchinsky
Genre: Heavy Metal
Rating: 7.0 / 10
Steel Prophet! An incredible American band of the old metal school. Old-fashioned, bone-hard stuff with some serious speed metal elements. You’d have thought it was over for good. That they’d drawn the line and would never, ever come back. The band started out in the mid-eighties, but only began releasing albums in the nineties. Still, with singer Rick Mythiasin up front, a wonderfully fitting stroll through the old impulses of American speed metal, a healthy dose of musical theatricality and escapes into the kind of structures that moved the likes of Queensryche and Fates Warning into a new genre current in the eighties, they delivered a razor-sharp shot in the arm to the scene. They were developing their own stamp of authorial identity.
“The God Machine” is the band’s ninth studio album. And it’s a radical departure from what the band delivered on albums like “The Book Of Dead”, “Into The Void” or “Messiah” (to name just a few in an otherwise very high-quality run). In 2015 the band brought in singer Robert Dimitri Liapakis, who also sings for the German band Mystic Prophecy. The man nails his vocal duties and fits very well into every moment of “The God Machine”. What’s surprising is the swerve away from the musical direction that always gave the band its recognizable stance.
The intro already serves up an interesting association. On the new album, starting with the opening title track, Steel Prophet work elements of European, German-school power metal into their style. R.D. Liapakis has a vocal charisma similar to, say, Rick Altzi (Herman Frank). He sings in a distinctly raspy voice, yet keeps the melodies strongly musical. That raspiness is the exact opposite of Rick Mythiasin’s extremely high registers and crystal-clear singing. But that’s not a problem. The vocalist delivered the best he knows and can. The songwriting style has simply changed. Leaning on the essence of German power metal (the first three songs, then Soulhunter in the middle, or the mid-tempo Lucifer / The Devil Inside), you get the shocking realization that a considerable dose of hard rock sneaks onto the album too. The song Fight, Kill is the moment that brings the new Steel Prophet closer to their classic days. It’s dark, aggressive and “exploratory” enough, which is a quality you always demand from a guitar master like Steve Katchinsky. That’s the little glimmer of light that someone hoping for something closer to, say, “Dark Hallucinations” was waiting for.
The album is by no means bad. The production is metal, it grabs like metal, in other words it still sounds dark enough, but in its compositional approach the record can, in places, be compared to a sharpened-up variety of hard rock (Dark Mask (Between Love And Hate) or the verse in the closing Love = Hate = God Machine). Anyway. The cover art is excellent and the right “groove” is here. But some caution up front is definitely not out of place this time. Those unburdened by the essence of this extremely high-quality and often unjustly overlooked American band’s past work (in this respect you could compare them to the likes of Jag Panzer), will be perfectly happy with “The God Machine”, even if it often leans toward Euro power metal (blasphemous or not, mentioning Mystic Prophecy is totally fitting here), you’ll be completely satisfied. True-believer metalheads will rather stick with this band’s old records, because this time Steel Prophet are dancing through notes that are just too soft.
author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Track list:
1. The God Machine
2. Crucify
3. Thrashed Relentlessly
4. Dark Mask / Between Love And Hate
5. Damnation Calling
6. Soulhunter
7. Buried And Broken
8. Lucifer / The Devil Inside
9. Fight, Kill
10. Life = Love = God Machine
Line-up:
R.D. Liapakis – vocals
Steve Kachinsky – guitar, keyboards
Jon Paget – guitar
Vince Dennis – bass guitar
John Tarascio – drums
