Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Riot
Label: Nuclear Blast
Release: 2018
Length: 52:26
Rating: 4/5
What happens when you cross Conan with a seal and shove a gleaming shield into his hands? You get the cover of the new Riot V album »Armor of Light«. No need for many words, it all lights up pretty fast. Riot V are the continuation of the story of the legendary New York heavy metal greats Riot, founded way back in 1975, after the death of their founding and original member Mark Reale, who passed away at the end of 2012. »Unleash the Fire«, the first album without Mark Reale, was a superb achievement, and Riot V, in the same lineup, with the excellent Todd Michael Hall on vocals, follow the musical vision and guidelines of the late Mark Reale with feather-light ease, keeping a superb and convincing link with the band’s entire past discography.
»Armor Of Light« is therefore a record that keeps a superb link to everything Riot ever were and, quite logically, ties in stylistically most naturally with its predecessor »Unleash the Fire«. The band has once again managed to assemble a series of imposing guitar phrases, backed by outstanding experience and routine, and craftily crossed with an innate feel for ultra-melodic catchiness, which has always been Riot’s trademark. There’s a heap of ornamental passages where the double harmonies stacked in thirds really shine, a trait that runs through the band’s whole musical output and that usually tells you in a heartbeat that Riot are with us, or rather, Riot V, as they’re now called.
Todd Michael Hall, with his extremely high yet incredibly authoritative and piercing voice, which carries vocal power with ease from the lowest to the extremely high registers, remains more than an excellent replacement for the famous Tony Moore, with whom the band recorded its most prominent work in the eighties, the records that put them on the world map of metal.
Riot V don’t skimp on energy in their mature years, they don’t dim the lights by a single quantum of light energy, not by one lux. They open the album with the power metal onslaught Victory, which, in a series of charging moments, is the first to embody the cover of the new album. Frank Gilchriest, a man who used to drum for Virgin Steele (and still officially holds the job there, even though the band is dormant), another of the unjustly overlooked legends of the eighties new wave of American metal, has worked the doctrine of double bass drum pedal use to perfection, and Riot V use it mostly, not just in the opening track but across the whole album, to the fullest extent possible. A few marching rhythms inside the songs also show where, say, the well-oiled Manowar once drew their inspiration, a band that over the years became far more notorious on the metal map than the pioneering Riot, who would no doubt have deserved such a position much more. The galloping double bass drum pedals, over which signature guitar riffs and Hall’s explosive singing soar, race through a transitional passage, as a rule in every song, into a chorus of predatory catchiness. You couldn’t wish for a more invasive start to an album. The style carried by the opener Victory alone is textbook eighties Riot metal.
The band has once again masterfully combined two elements that are the true building blocks of a real heavy metal album: bombastic catchiness and the occult gloom of doomed drama theater. The album keeps flowing between its triumphant side and that doomed drama theater. The mood switches are constant, and the dynamic of how things unfold is at the highest possible level. Brilliant guitar passages, superb soloing in the mid-eight sections from both guitarists (you can feel the excellent chemistry between the two guitars), inventive modulations within the development of the melodies, precisely and craftily woven transitions in which the red thread of the songwriting doesn’t let up for a second and maintains an incredible tightness. That tightness is a big guarantee of the thunderous crushing power of this classically conceived heavy metal record. Yes, Iron Maiden fans will surely like it, but it’s worth mentioning that Riot are as old as Iron Maiden, since they formed in the same year, just on the other side of the Atlantic, and the most meticulous fans of the band will be happy to tell you that Riot V are really today’s tribute to Riot. At the same time, though, it’s a brilliant, head-to-toe imprint of the Reale era of the band.
Anthem after anthem. From the start to the end of the album. With atmospheric peaks in big, melodically polished chorus hooks! Onslaught after onslaught. There are plenty of moments that blast you back to the golden eighties and the era of the famous »Thundersteel« album. »Armor of Light« is therefore an achievement tailor-made once again for all Riot fans and everyone who loves traditional heavy metal logic, old-school ossified, pioneering in nature, where highly vibrant melodicism, punchy bombastic crushing power with a high-octane yield, and high drama communicate in a brilliant symbiosis. The tracks are structured so that they’ll easily blend live with the band’s iron repertoire at the upcoming shows, and the mind is already drifting to Sunday, October 21, 2018, when the band, in the company of Primal Fear, stops by Ljubljana again after a full 19 years.
Lineup
Todd Michael Hall – vocals
Mike Flyntz – guitar
Nick Lee – guitar
Don Van Stavern – bass guitar
Frank Gilchriest – drums
Production
Riot V
Tracklist
01. Victory
02. End Of The World
03. Messiah
04. Angel’s Thunder, Devil’s Reign
05. Burn The Daylight
06. Heart Of A Lion
07. Armor Of Light
08. Set The World Alight
09. San Antonio
10. Caught In the Witches Eye
11. Ready to Shine
12. Raining Fire
