Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Iron Savior
Label: AFM Records
Release: 2015
Length: 54.01
Rating: 5/5
The Lord works in mysterious ways, doesn’t he? You produce your own studio album, and a few years later you realize there’s no way you can be happy with the production. In 2007, the German power metallers Iron Savior from Hamburg recorded and released their sixth studio album, »Megatropolis«. The band, which many wrote off as heading for a quick decline in 2001 after Kai Hansen (Gamma Ray, ex-Helloween) left following the album »Dark Assault«, shut up all the doubting Thomases the very next year with the excellent Condition Red, and two years later raised the bar even higher with the album »Battering Ram« (2004). Both albums confirmed that band founder Piet Sielck is really its main driving and creative engine. A creator of outstanding guitar lines and a man with an incredible knack for fusing metal aggression, darkness and high musicality, into a body that makes these ingredients coexist in a fascinating way!
It was becoming clear that the band was on an artistic upswing and that Sielck was getting along just fine on his own, without Hansen. So in 2007 we got an album from Iron Savior that could have passed as its creative zenith, if the production hadn’t been a bit lame, and if? Sielck hadn’t gone and »fixed« it this year. »Megatropolis«, that is. When the album came out, nobody among the general public, music critics included, paid that much attention to the production itself. Over the years, though, its creator Piet Sielck became very sensitive about the album’s sound. Personally.
And honestly? Put on the original version of »Megatropolis« and you quickly realize you can barely make out the bass lines, while the drums sound like someone drumming their fingernails on an empty matchbox. That’s a glaringly obvious flaw, one even a »deaf« listener can spot with a little effort. But Sielck is a perfectionist, so he set about »peeling out« a new version of the album from several angles. The band, in its current lineup, re-recorded the whole album. From head to toe. Vocals, backing vocals, guitars, bass guitars, drums. Everything. The sound is thus brought within a hair of the sound of the band’s two most recent studio albums, »The Landing« (2011) and especially »The Rise of the Hero« (2014). »Megatropolis 2.0« sounds sharpened up and wildly alive. Maximum contrast. On one side it carries a razor-sharp, lively wall of riffing guitars, and on the other (finally) a superb backdrop of a highly active dialogue between the stampeding double-bass pedals and the bass guitar lines. Woven through all of it is Piet Sielck’s vocal, which compared to the original sounds even more decisive, confident, lived-in, passionate and focused. In short, matured and upgraded. Over the years Sielck has grown into an outstanding metal singer. He has incredible punch, and his voice gives the songs a dark tint too. He’s the ideal singer for the genre Iron Savior belong to. At the same time, he has also enriched his vocals on the new version with freshly recorded vocal harmonies, which sound considerably more dynamic and more seamlessly fitted into the arrangements than on the original. There’s more. Sielck went through the original once more, very carefully, when it came to the running order. Simple as that. He wanted the album to finally develop its optimal effect when you listen to it. So he shook up the track order compared to the original and deliberately shuffled it. The album now opens with the snarling, razor-edged The Omega Man, while Running Riot, which opens the original, is only fifth on the list. The title track, for example, is now second, whereas on the original it was fourth, etc…
Iron Savior are a band we like to compare with Gamma Ray, which is perfectly fair. Still, Gamma Ray kept a note of lucidity in their sound, which Hansen carried over to Gamma Ray from his days with Helloween. Iron Savior don’t have that note. Their songs are generally steeped in a lot of drama, even a sense of doom and blackness. They’d rather build them from the minor than from the major. The songs are also, across the board, very fast. Iron Savior hardly know ballads at all. »Megatropolis« is an album with three songs that run in what you might call »fourth gear« (if we caricature the rest as running in the highest one, fifth). Those three are Cybernetic Queen, Still I Believe and A Tale From Down Below. The album »Megatropolis« is the point in Iron Savior’s output where Sielck managed to stack together a series of songs with a verse – chorus pairing of exceptional impact (payoff). With a superb build-up of moods that reach their crescendo in the chorus melodies and deliver an exceptional culmination of metal punch and ultra-melodic musicality. It’s precisely on those three »slower« songs that this note of musicality is all the more intensified.
It’s hard to pick favorites on the album, since the songs stand side by side in terms of quality. The album knows no arrangement or songwriting stumbles, and Sielck pulled off exactly what he wanted. By shuffling the running order compared to the 2007 original, he achieved a considerably stronger atmospheric effect and, by intensifying the dynamic flow of events, upgraded the album’s mood-grabbing power in turn. Both musically and in the payoff of metal crushing force, which is outstanding on the revamped version!
If the »Megatropolis« that Iron Savior re-recorded in 2015 had been made back in 2007, it would have received a spotless five stars out of five at the time. As it is, we can give them to it now, because it truly deserves them. This is an album without a single bad moment, one that grabs you at a top-notch, enchanting level of grand power metal fervor, as carried over by the visionary creativity of Piet Sielck onto the band’s musical dossier.
Let’s hope the band finds enough financial backing to head out on at least a short European tour, playing the »refreshed« and »rejuvenated« album »Megatropolis« in its entirety. From head to toe. With both bonus tracks that came out in 2007 only on the Japanese version, and are now woven into the album’s new look in such a way that Hammerdown can be seen as an actual part of the album »Megatropolis 2.0«. In short. »Megatropolis 2.0« is one of the band’s strongest moments in its career, both artistically and expressively. It’ll probably stay that way, just as Iron Savior will probably stay an unjustly overlooked and underrated band on the scene.
Lineup
Piet Sielck – vocals, guitar
Joachim “Piesel” Küstner – guitar, backing vocals
Jan-Sören Eckert – bass guitar, backing vocals
Thomas Nack – drums
Production
Piet Sielck
Track list
1. The Omega Man 2.0
2. Megatropolis 2.0
3. Flesh 2.0
4. Cybernatic Queen 2.0
5. Running Riot 2.0
6. A Tale From Down Below 2.0
7. Cyber Hero 2.0
8. Still I Believe 2.0
9. Hammerdown 2.0
10. Farewell And Goodbye 2.0
11. Iron Watcher 2.0
