Label: Frontiers Music Srl.
Release date: April 19, 2024
Production: Praying Mantis
Album length: 46. 46 min
Genre: Heavy Metal / AOR
Rating: 8.0/10
Praying Mantis, the grand veterans of British melodic hard and heavy rock who came up in the days of the N.W.O.B.H.M., are back with yet another studio album. It’s called “Defiance”. It’s the 13th studio album from this long-lived band, and? Yep. It sticks to the artistic recipe of its predecessors, so every fan of the band already has it in their collection.
For those of you who don’t know what we’re talking about, let’s rewind real quick! Back in time. Praying Mantis go back to 1973, when the band was formed under the name Junction. It was founded by the brothers Tino (vocals, guitar) and Chris Troy (bass, vocals), who are still the creative driving force of the band’s lineup today. They were soon joined by guitarist and vocalist Steve Carrol and drummer Dave Potts. In 1974 Junction renamed themselves Praying Mantis and joined the wave of new bands that helped shape the movement known as the ‘New Wave Of British Heavy Metal’ (N.W.O.B.H.M.). With a career spanning five decades, the band has held on to a distinct place on the rock scene and, with their unique sound and uncompromising dedication to writing their own music, influenced generations of musicians.
Enough poetry! Praying Mantis, who are celebrating their 50th anniversary this year, keep the musical vision of their predecessor “Katharsis” (RockLine review, 2022) alive on the new album, while staying true to their musical roots. The band is still led by founding members, the brothers Chris and Tino Troy, joined by vocalist Jaycee Cuijpers, drummer Hans in’t Zandt and guitarist Andy Burgess. All the band’s trademarks are here again. The ones that define the very essence of the Praying Mantis sound.
The thirteenth album keeps the band’s promise. There’s nothing here in the way of artistic curveballs that would shift continents or knock the magnetic poles off their axes. Praying Mantis cling to the guidelines of a musical formula they could play with their left pinky and where they feel the most ‘safe’.
In Praying Mantis you can hear plenty of what shaped the band’s signature style. Queen, Uriah Heep, Sweet,…. Then again, they really didn’t need to squeeze a cover of the Rainbow classic I Surrender into the regular part of the album. But the band obviously loves that song to bits. The arrangement certainly lacks nothing. Still, Praying Mantis don’t need this. Then there’s the semi-ballad Forever In My Heart, which feels stretched out and gets a bit ‘over the top’ thanks to singer John Cuijpers’s generous vocal sprawl, bordering on vocal exercises in Montenegrin wolf-howling from Šarplanina. These two are really the moments on the album that cost it some credibility.
The production is standard. And it’s closer to the sound of the eighties than to the trendy findings of the new era. The same goes for the level of musical seduction and pomp across the album as a whole. Nothing slips past them in that department. Theatrical bombast remains the band’s middle name. The keyboards in the production mix are really on equal footing with the guitar phrases. Since the band has always been inspired to chase pronounced musicality, on the new album Praying Mantis are once again a special hybrid of classic-era heavy metal and AOR. The choruses are the parts of the songs that bring the mood crescendo. They push right into your ear and grab you from the first listen. An album, then, that the band’s followers can only greet with open arms.
»Defiance« is, in short, a very nice and good heavy metal album from the old-school, set-in-stone eighties. Soaked in the sound of keyboards that intensely contrast with the guitar phrases, since they’re really equal partners in building the soundscape itself, with a clear, explosively centered lead vocal, colored by theatrical backing-vocal harmonies (a long-standing band practice). Polished middle-eight passages (with guitar solos) liven up the songs nicely and guarantee a high-energy, dynamic flow across the album. And of course the three-part harmonies are here – it’s with this element in particular that the band reminds us of its N.W.O.B.H.M. origins (the album »Time Tells No Lies«, 1981 – remains an immortal genre classic in that respect).
Compared to its predecessor »Katharsis«, which was steeped in pronounced melancholy and at times downright gloom, »Defiance« is a brighter continuation of the band’s career. Worth singling out is Give It Up, with an especially catchy chorus melody that could have become an evergreen hit in the eighties, and Praying Mantis have also put an excellent instrumental on the album this time, Nightswim, which leans mildly progressive and conjures up a mystical atmosphere. An interesting feeling when listening to this album is that its most exciting, theatrical and, let’s just say, plain interesting moments come in the sequence of the last four songs, peaking with Standing Tall and Let’s See. The latter is especially interesting in how it develops, since the band once again flirts with progressive rock elements, though by no means intensely. Just in very mild detours, as it never veers off its flint-hewn musical guidelines, which are well known. And that’s why the album grows from minute to minute. In terms of pomp and bombast. In that respect Praying Mantis have done their studio work and fulfilled their artistic mission once again with great distinction.
Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Tracklist:
1. From The Start
2. Defiance
3. Feelin’ Lucky
4. I Surrender
5. Forever In My Heart
6. Never Can Say Goodbye
7. One Heart
8. Give It Up
9. Nightswim
10. Standing Tall
11. Let’s See
Praying Mantis are:
Jaycee Cuijpers – vocals
Tino Troy – guitar, backing vocals
Andy Burgess – guitar, backing vocals
Chris Troy – bass guitar, backing vocals
Hans in’t Zandt – drums, percussion
