Label: Metal Blade Records
Release date: 10/23/2020
Production: Joey Vera
Album length: 53:35 min
Genre: Heavy Metal
Rating: 9.0/10
Armored Saint are legendary American heavy metallers. Nobody kicks you between the eyes harder than this, with guitar phrasing so bare and primal, stripped down and rugged. The veterans, who put out their self-titled EP 37 years ago, are back five years after “Win Hands Down” with a record that, as its predecessor’s title hints, calls for a tribute “hands down”. “Punching the Sky” is everything its “gym-class” title promises. This is a band that has actually released few albums, with five to ten years of waiting between them, and this time they left us hanging for “just” five years. Thanks, guys. Especially thanks for such an honestly ossified manifesto of the classics, one an old-school devotee will go nuts for, because this is a move by living fossils of metal that sounds like it was forged in the good old days when metal still had the wind in its sails, perfectly crossed with the polish of modern studio tricks. No doubt about that when the band’s bassist, Joey Vera, is the one at the production helm.
The sound is alive, dirty, damn “real”, and cuts right to the bone. The band bites like they’ve only just started their career, and not for a second does it feel like these are guys who have long since passed Abraham’s age and carry a colorful bag of tales about good and evil. The guitar duo of Phil Sandoval and Jeff Duncan keeps all the trademarks behind the classic Armored Saint recipe. The sharpness, the wit and the fatal allure of the two guitarists’ crossfire follow this album at every step too. Alongside the variety of ideas that literally keeps “Punching The Sky” moving from start to finish, a big plus of this album is that it has far more flow and dynamics in how things unfold than both its predecessor, “Win Hands Down” (2015), and the one before that, “La Raza” (2010).
The band’s new studio theater is intense, passionate and fiercely boiling from start to finish. Its good 54 minutes never confuse, bore or leave the listener feeling down. Armored Saint haven’t made a bad album in their entire career. Still, the new one can boast an even bigger haul of what ties modern Armored Saint to the classic days of the eighties. What’s more, “Punching The Sky” is, no beating around the bush, an album that comes within an inch of “Symbol of Salvation” (1991) in quality. That’s the one that many fans consider the crown jewel of the Armored Saint discography. The middle stretch of Lone Wolf and Missile to Gun in particular slot straight into the classic canon of the band’s first four albums without any further debate. Perhaps one of the band’s last tours, on which they played the whole of “Symbol of Salvation” plus a bunch of other classics, is to ‘blame’ for how the songwriting process for the new album works, making it at times feel that much more closely tied to the band’s romantic days.
And John Bush? This man simply doesn’t know how to sing badly and can’t. Even if he wanted to, he wouldn’t pull it off. After all these years, his voice still serves him brilliantly. He keeps up the passion, the fury, the explosive power, the authority, and also the moments of “introverted restraint” where a more sophisticated feel is needed (“Fly in the Ointment”, the ballad “Unfair”). The choruses are mostly gripping and, with John Bush’s dominant performance, stick in your ear instantly (the opening stretch of the album proves it, as “Standing on the Shoulders of Giants”, “End of the Attention Span” and “Bubble” come one after another). The album has an extremely distinctive rhythmic “groove” that keeps up an effective contrast with the guitar riffing. The bass lines dig and tear with a rattle as they cut through steel with all their might, while the cannon-shot swings of the drums clear a path for them. As said … The outstanding production only amplifies all the sincerity and truthful sanctity of this record, which expresses everything that’s primarily demanded of real metal. Disobedience and defiance on the band’s timeless walk down their own self-made, self-willed path under a free sun, but also bleak outlooks, ominousness and mockery. “Punching the Sky” makes absolutely no compromises.
Fans of the band and fans of the classic days of the American school will be thrilled by this new dose of shameless perversions from metal veterans Armored Saint. The material speaks to you on a primal level. So primal that, for instance, in the ‘chorus-barking’ “Bark, No Bite” the guitar playing at points comes close to the pioneering elements of seventies heavy rock bands (UFO, Thin Lizzy). It’s an experiment and a fun detour on this studio effort, the new album, which proudly walks side by side with the band’s classics.
Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Track list:
01. Standing On The Shoulders Of Giants
02. End Of The Attention Span
03. Bubble
04. My Jurisdiction
05. Do Wrong To None
06. Lone Wolf
07. Missile To Gun
08. Fly In The Ointment
09. Bark, No Bite
10. Unfair
11. Never You Fret
Line-up:
John Bush – vocals
Phil Sandoval – guitar
Jeff Duncan – guitar
Joey Vera – bass
Gonzo Sandoval – drums
