Label: AFM Records
Release date: September 17, 2021
Production: Seeb Levermann
Album length: 44.42 min
Rating: 9.5/10
Genre: Power Metal
Brainstorm! The new album “Wall Of Skulls” is already their fourteenth. Let me whisper a little secret: the band has been around since 1989, yet it took them a full eight years to cough up a studio debut. Ah, who even remembers that? To cut it short: in recent years Brainstorm have counted as one of the most stable and consistent crews on the global power metal scene. Their run of excellent to very good albums is remarkable, and the new one keeps that streak going. Setting aside the long stretch between the band’s founding and the debut mentioned above, Brainstorm have been delivering albums regularly, at relatively short intervals, ever since 1997, and they never stop wowing us with their new studio efforts.
Three years ago we got “Midnight Ghost” (2018, RockLine review). It was a standout in the band’s string of achievements, and to promote it they played, among other places, at Ljubljana’s Orto bar in late January 2019, where, despite singer Andy B. Franck battling a cold that night, they absolutely burned the place to the ground. There’s no need to say much about this band’s live power. On shared tours they loved stealing the show from Primal Fear, and back in 2002 Grave Digger were shaking in their boots when Brainstorm opened for them, fresh off what you could call their breakthrough albums “Ambiguilty” (2000) and “Metus Mortis” (2001). Why do I bring this up? The core of the crew, the two guitarists Milan Loncaric and Thorsten Ihlenfeld plus drummer Dieter Bernert, has been a fixture since 1989, and the band really took off on the wings of Andy B. Franck joining in 1999. Apart from one single lineup change on bass later on, this crew has stayed rock solid and coherent. Over all those years they’ve built incredible bonds, and the creative chemistry is downright unbelievable, if not outright wonderful. Potent inspiration at every turn. High-octane burn from venomously wound-up, razor-sharpened dynamics and spiked guitar phrases, backed by a demolishing stampede of drums and, above all, the brilliant, instantly recognizable and dominant vocals of Andy B. Franck, who confirms on the new album that he’s one of the best singers in power metal today, remain the fiery, unruly ingredient on “Wall of Skulls” too.
The new collection of songs, running a (welcome) solid 44 minutes, is once again polished in every way and once again develops all those trademarks that have always set this band alight. First and foremost, that’s hellish destructiveness paired with infectious musicality, which, alongside the doom-laden character of flawless, vampiric metal, also gives Brainstorm a compact, unmistakable touch of bombast. This is a band that has always loved drawing on the elements of Teutonic thrash metal in its songwriting, only to keep building on it with a search for musical “fine mechanics” and the incredibly piercing vocals of Andy B. Franck, which in the end always pull the band’s sound into power metal territory. The new album once again bursts with creative inspiration and freshness, and in sheer power it’s an outstanding follow-up to its excellent predecessor “Midnight Ghost” and, in quality, easily comparable to the best moments of the band’s career, like its classic album “Liquid Monster” (2005). When it crunches and sparks the way it does on My Dystopia, comparisons like that are anything but immodest.
The work of both guitarists is once again outstanding. The middle-eight passage in Stigmatized (Shadows Fall) says it all. Then there’s the unbelievably bombastic chorus of the anthem Holding On, which could have earned the band a metal monument back in the eighties, while the rest of the album is seasoned with a series of typical Brainstorm slaps in the face. The opening run-up with Where Ravens Fly makes that clear, followed shortly after by Escape The Silence with special guest Peavy Wagner (Rage), then the stomping Turn Off The Light with guest and album producer Seeb Levermann (Orden Ogan), as well as the aforementioned perfect My Dystopia. In the same white-hot manner, the closing I, the Deciever puts the dot on the “i” and counts as one of the strongest points of the new album. Then there are the moments that gently discharge the album’s otherwise bristling tension, like the song Solitude. An atmospheric mid-tempo number, it keeps the album’s theatrical gloom while maintaining incredible musicality. Glory Dissapears and End Of My Innocence play a similar role later on the album.
“Wall Of Skulls” is a downright excellent new studio album from Brainstorm. It’s amazing that, even though this is the band’s fourteenth studio effort, we can effortlessly stick the label on it that it’s even one of the best achievements of their entire career. If not the best, then at least one of the most mature. The band is still here. Still fiery, incredibly inspired, focused. Hungry for blood, they kick and bite wickedly, mockingly, furiously and angrily, as if they’d just made their debut more than 20 years ago. The relentlessly stormy new studio onslaught “Wall Of Skulls” tears everything down in its path, and fans of the band have already adopted this album in the meantime. Brainstorm have once again driven their fascinating metal formula to its expressive peak. The kind of record where you say it really doesn’t get any better than this.
Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Track list:
1. Chamber Thirteen
2. Where Ravens Fly
3. Solitude
4. Escape The Silence
5. Turn Off The Light
6. Glory Disappears
7. My Dystopia
8. End Of My Innocence
9. Stigmatized (Shadows Fall)
10. Holding On
11. I, The Deceiver
Lineup:
Andy B. Franck – vocals
Milan Loncaric – guitar, backing vocals
Torsten Ihlenfeld – guitar, backing vocals
Antonio Ieva – bass
Dieter Bernert – drums
Guest musicians:
Peter “Peavy” Wagner (Rage) – vocals on track no. 4
Seeb Levermann (Orden Ogan) – vocals on track no. 5
