Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: BrainStorm
Label: AFM Records
Release: 2016
Rating: 4/5
The eleventh studio album from Heidenheim’s hard-as-nails German power/thrash metal storm troopers Brainstorm, titled »Scary Creatures«, keeps the band’s winning streak of excellent releases going strong. »Scary Creatures« is the logical next chapter of the story told on its superb predecessor »Firesoul« (2014).
Brainstorm remain grafters. And since they’re on a creative roll, they know you have to strike while the iron is hot and glowing. That’s why the new album hits the scene after just two years, yet Brainstorm aren’t letting the quality slip one bit. »Scary Creatures« is once again incredibly mature, polished, finely defined and, for all those reasons, a tightly packed, hard-hitting metal album full of the signature elements that make up this band’s musical calling card. No more, no less. With it, Brainstorm, drawing on loads of experience, keep nurturing and deepening their recognizable sound, which gives them a special place in German and European power metal.
All in all, this album feels a touch more musical than »Firesoul«, and because of that maybe also more classically power metal, although the »thrashed-up« guitar phrases with which Brainstorm have always dressed their ideas in their own way are back again, and the album is plastered with them. The band has weighed the chorus melodies down with great pomp. At first grab they hit as downright bombastic. But they’re underpinned by an incredible bristling of guitar riffs, riding the toxically serrated cogwheels of torpedoing rhythmic kinetics, through the merciless detonation of the double bass drum pedals and penetrating bass lines. That’s why »Scary Creatures« too delivers just the right character of walking the middle path between melodic catchiness and true metal sharpness, an uncompromising, punchy bristle that doesn’t let up for a second.
The middle instrumental sections slide into melodic modulation, where both guitarists deliver top-notch solos, stringing together vivid switches between rapid-fire arpeggios and tastefully measured passages, while the band never loses its remarkable focus in the arrangements, fusing the lead motifs in a compositionally cohesive way. So the songs build up a superb progression of moods all the way to the climax in the chorus melodies, while in the mid-eights the mood spins around dizzyingly effectively. The drama theater and dark character of this album have once again handed the band a winning poker hand of aces. Brainstorm also confirm their maturing with highly inventive orchestral touches, which deepen the atmosphere of individual songs and contrast the sonic landscape of the new tracks. That the guitarists often »over-pick« individual guitar phrases with hellishly fast harmonized embellishments in thirds hardly needs saying. That’s the German school of heavy metal for you!
Another special touch is the involvement of the band members’ own children, who sang the choir parts in, for example, the rousingly pompous We Are. Lyrically, the new Brainstorm album is more personal and confessional than its predecessor.
What to say in closing? »Scary Creatures« is once again tailor-made for every Brainstorm devotee and lover of the most authentic, true-to-form side of European power metal. In recent years you can find quite a few compositional parallels between Brainstorm and Primal Fear, so the move of the two bands heading out on a joint European tour for the third time is completely logical and more than fitting.
Line-up
Andy B. Franck – vocals
Torsten Ihlenfeld – guitar
Milan Loncaric – guitar
Antonio Ieva – bass
Dieter Bernert – drums
Production
Achim Köhler
Track list
1. The World To See
2. How Much Can You Take
3. We Are
4. Where Angels Dream
5. Scary Creatures
6. Twisted Ways
7. Caressed By The Blackness
8. Scars In Your Eyes
9. Take Me To The Never
10. Sky Among The Clouds
