Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Lancer
Label: Nuclear Blast
Released: 2017
Runtime: 52:16
Rating: 3/5
Another round of cliché power metal is coming out of Sweden. Lancer and their third studio album »Mastery«.
For their new tour, none other than HammerFall invited the band and handed them the support slot. That’s the very outfit that, with the power metal revival of the second half of the nineties, swung the metal masses’ attention back to a renewed focus on, and excitement about, the retro-sounding melodic craft of heavy metal.
Now, Lancer aren’t revivalists who draw inspiration from the legacy of NWOBHM bands, which is otherwise a common trait of new acts when they pick a singer with clean, melodic vocals as the central figure (Steelwing, Alpha Tiger, Enforcer, Stallion,…). Lancer are a known and proven quantity, and their approach most directly recalls their countrymen HammerFall. Especially because of the lead vocals, which are a dead ringer for Joacim Cans (especially in his best days). Otherwise, on the debut Lancer soak up a bombast and musical catchiness that will quickly appeal to fans of the likes of Bloodbound, Falconer and/or Narnia, while the shaping of the singalong choruses also draws on an infatuation with the »Kiske era« of Helloween, and so inevitably recalls some tracks by Unisonic, where Michael Kiske is of course the one singing.
If it weren’t all long dead already, “Mastery” would be a real little work of art, a masterpiece. It’s got it all. Drama theater, pomp, musical catchiness, nicely woven mid-eight sections with solos. All the classic trademarks that define quality power metal from head to toe,. You can’t fault them for anything here. Except the fact that they’re reheating old soup. Anyway, we humans have the memory of goldfish, history will never teach us anything, and so the golden rule holds in music too: never say never. You never know when a cliché might catch fire again. If Lancer throw on a bit of makeup and kitsch down the road and come up with a good stage set and costume design, we’ll instantly get a new commercial success story like Powerwolf or Sabaton, while Gloryhammer are well on their way there.
So. Lancer deserve some praise. Despite the total lack of interest from the new generations in the expressive range of the power metal genre, which makes sense, since the more extreme and technically demanding forms metal has produced in its subgenres in recent years are way more interesting, Lancer mustered the courage and bit the bullet. Clichés won’t bring them fame, but there’s at least the consolation that a genre robbed of ideas and impoverished is getting, in Lancer, a new band hungry to prove itself, full of dedicated songwriting and of course a craving to perform. Lancer keep up that defiance and confirm it on their third studio effort too!
And last but not least. On the new release they’ve at least shaken off the ridiculous covers of past releases with the cyber chicken.
Lancer – Mastery (official video):
Lineup
Isak Stenvall – vocals
Per-Owe Solvelius – guitar
Fredrik Kelemen – guitar
Emil Öberg – bass
Sebastian Pedernera – drums
Production
Gustav Ydenius
Tracklist
1. Dead Raising Towers
2. Future Millennia
3. Mastery
4. Victims of the Nile
5. Iscariot
6. Follow Azrael
7. Freedom Eaters
8. World Unknown
9. Widowmaker
10. Envy of the Gods
