Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Jag Panzer
Label: SPV Records
Released: 2011
Length: 48:51
Rating: 4.5/5
Even though it’s no longer breaking news, we can’t just walk past this year’s release of the last official studio album from Colorado power metallers Jag Panzer, “The Scourge Of The Light”. The album came out in early spring 2011, and in midsummer band boss Mark Briody officially announced that Jag Panzer had “retired”, which pretty much means he called it quits on the band for good.
Despite a handful of seriously landmark albums over the past decade, which basically redefined the American approach to power metal for the new millennium, the band never managed to break the ice and get international recognition, or to reap a decent harvest for all the seeds it sowed. Jag Panzer simply remain among that global handful of unjustly overlooked bands, a kind of “well-kept secret” that only the most hardcore power metal devotees ever dig up. Only the latest album, “The Scourge Of The Light”, brought the band some visible success, landing at No. 117 on the American Billboard chart of best-selling albums a week after release. However you slice it, it’s most likely this very fact of scraping by on the margins that led Briody to his final decision to close the Jag Panzer story for good.
But this is no testament to some pathetic self-pity. Picture the last stand of the Spartan Leonidas against the Persians! “You’ll get my head, but you’ll pay with yours too!”, that’s roughly how the saying would go. “The Scourge Of The Light” is a fantastic album from head to toe, and after it Jag Panzer are no more. Polished in every detail, the band spits fire with the full force of creative inspiration, and the material radiates, at full intensity, the raw essence of the traditional trademarks that make the name Jag Panzer instantly recognizable to every true heavy metal fanatic!
The band, which showed up on the scene in the early eighties, naturally took up the tradition of the American approach to heavy metal. An old-school approach, bold and bitingly aggressive, one that quickly picked up the “speed” label, loaded with hellishly fast playing that sits on top of the innate, elemental aggression of the guitar riff, yet always with a clearly highlighted feel for melodic, epic bombast. “American-style”, of course. Throw in the occasional “thrashed-up” riff and drench it all in a generous helping of baroque melodic cosmetics, with melodic ornaments twitching over the riffs, often caught in harmonies in thirds. These traits, from the album “The Age Of Mastery” (1998) onward, brought Jag Panzer closer overall to the ears of European power metal fans. So this band was always more appreciated in Europe than in North America, where it comes from. That’s the curse of those little “European-sounding” power metal bands from the US, like Virgin Steele, even if theirs is a blend of a completely different musical rhetoric.
The very opening of the album with the anthemic Condemned To Fight instantly sums up the previous paragraph. A ravenous riff, a little hellforged baroque night music, the unmistakable Conklin vocals roaring (compared to the band’s earlier work) with undiminished authority, in a full-lunged rush of melodically commanding force. The first instrumental passage confirms that Christian Lasegue is in every way the right answer to Chris Broderick, who left the band in 2008 to join the lucrative Megadeth. The lineup swap turned out to be more than successful. The songs are again built from lots of sudden tempo turns and strings of lead motifs, with the arrangements inherited in this respect from Iron Maiden, played American-style, of course. More aggressive, faster, technically much better and on a higher level.
The choruses have an atmospheric “crescendo” in which Conklin’s vocal range hits its maximum melodic payoff, and the same goes for the ravenous melodic allure of the songs. The mood is dark and dramatic, yet at every point on the album solemn and epic-sounding.
The songs practically compete with each other over which will claim the title of lead track in all that exposed epic bombast. In terms of ideas and arrangements, “The Scourge Of The Light” is an album of supple, shifting lead motifs and high dynamic flow. Only on Cycles is the pomp reined in a little, since in this song darkness finally overpowers the solemn reach of the track. Right after it, the ultra-catchy chorus of Overlord puts things back in their place. The dabbling with the legacy of the classics from the baroque era comes through most in the closing stretch of the album, on the last two songs, Burn and then The Book Of Kells. The latter especially, a “mini suite” with added string arrangements and a subtle vocal intro, revives the band’s classic works, like The Moors (“The Age Of Mastery”) or the calmer moments of the album “Thane To The Throne” (2000), and carries the album to its atmospheric peak at the close. The album was again produced in Florida, at Morrisound studio, so it keeps the traditional sonic heritage of past albums, hits straight on and kicks with full balls. That means that, as far as power metal goes, it sounds way more scorching, real and cocky when you compare the production on “The Scourge Of Light” with Jag Panzer’s European contemporaries (I’m pointing at you, Helloween!).
“The Scourge Of The Light” hasn’t lost a speck of classic Jag Panzer expression! It’s a document of an honorable closing cry from a band with a big heart, one that, despite the curse of being unjustly overlooked, stayed true and devoted to its heart to the very end of its run. “The Scourge Of The Light” is Jag Panzer’s closing document of great distinction, or as Judas Priest would put it: “One Shot At Glory”. Let’s hope the band’s “retirement” is just a longer break!
Line-up
Harry Conklin – vocals
Mark Briody – guitar
Christian Lasegue – guitar
John Tetley – bass
Rikard Stjernquist – drums
Production
Jim Morris
Track list
01. Condemned To Fight
02. The Setting Of The Sun
03. Bringing On The End
04. Call To Arms
05. Cycles
06. Overlord
07. Let It Out
08. Union
09. Burn
10. The Book Of Kells
