Label: AFM Records
Release date: 11/26/2021
Production: Herman Frank & Arne Neurand
Album length: 50.19 min
Genre: Heavy Metal
Rating: 8.5/10
The new Victory album is finally here. It’s their tenth overall and their first in ten years. Victory are an old German outfit, and a heavy metal one at that. They play a raw, hard-boiled kind of heavy metal that leans heavily on hard rock, so you could just as well call it heavy & hard rock. Everything revolves around the central figure, guitar legend Herman Frank. After a string of seriously impressive, sharply honed, in-your-face releases in their first decade, Victory left the scene in 1996, and Herman Frank brought the band back to life in 2002. Since then, it all comes down to how much time Herman Frank has for Victory. We know he played with the revived Accept again between 2008 and 2014, and in recent years he’s been devoting himself to his own band’s albums as well, more than to Victory (the latest Herman Frank album, “Two For A Lile”, came out just this May – RockLine review).
Well, after a solid ten years we finally got a new Victory album called “Gods Of Tomorrow”. Once again the lineup backing Frank has been shaken up quite a bit compared to the one that recorded the previous album, “Don´t Talk Science” (2011). Despite the new faces, it has to be said right off the bat that Frank sticks very skillfully to the band’s musical heritage, which was founded on the albums released in the eighties. The new album keeps that link alive remarkably well. “Gods of Tomorrow” sounds old-school and the phrasing is very stripped down. There’s no overcomplicating things anywhere on it. The songs mostly run three and a half minutes too, while the solos remain the core of a gritty recipe that only Herman Frank can conjure up. Some of the songs could easily fit on a Herman Frank album, like the opener Love & Hate, the title track and My Own Desire, while quite a few others sound like they were written in the mid-eighties.
The content of “Gods Of Tomorrow”, and with it the whole character and work of the band, will win over fans of bands like Accept and U.D.O. too, which is actually only natural, even though musically the line between Victory and those two is clearly drawn. New vocalist Gianni Pontillo is an extremely good pick. A less raspy contour and a stronger dominance of clean, expressive, explosive vocals even throw up a few associations with Fernando Garcia, who sang for Victory between 1988 and 1996.
Interestingly, Gods of Tomorrow doesn’t lean too hard on Herman Frank’s solo albums, which would have been the expected thing. Instead, plenty of tracks speak in a far more old-fashioned voice, let’s say much more old-school and aimed squarely at the legacy of the eighties. The first of these is the punchy ballad Dying In Your Arms, especially its incredibly distinctive, penetrating chorus. Hold On To Me rings out particularly classic and nostalgic, and the atmosphere is shared a bit later on the album by the mid-tempo tracks Mad and Unconditional Love, as well as the closing Leave You Alone. They’re marked by excellent, classic, hard-boiled lead riffs and even more nostalgic-sounding chorus melodies. Into the Light is one of the faster tracks, if not the fastest wrecking ball on the album, but once again it’s thoroughly classic metal in its attitude – primal, Teutonic stuff.
Thirteen tracks sounds like a lot, and it reads like a lot too, but there’s nothing to fear. There are no dips in quality between the tracks, and Frank clearly had to sift through ideas for quite a while, ideas that spent a long time germinating and developing until they reached a level where they can credibly carry the musical substance behind the name Victory. The songs are conscientiously and carefully polished, and the guitar solos are once again a chapter of their own, which, as expected, are a particular pleasure to listen to.
A great new Victory album! Nostalgic, even with a significantly changed lineup gathered around the legendary Herman Frank. The old-school metal recipe catches fire in Herman Frank’s hands with full-blooded intensity. With as many as 13 tracks, there’s admittedly a risk that we’ll be waiting a very, very long time for the next Victory album again. But “Gods of Tomorrow” is a new manifesto that justifies the name of this cult German Teutonic heavy metal outfit, and that, deep into the new millennium, brings back the energy and vibe of the days when heavy metal was still young and wild in an incredibly satisfying way.
Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Tracklist:
1. Intro
2. Love & Hate
3. Gods Of Tomorrow
4. Cut To The Bone
5. Dying In Your Arms
6. Hold On To Me
7. Into The Light
8. Mad
9. Unconditional Love
10. My Own Desire
11. On Fire
12. Rising Force
13. In Rock We Trust
14. Leave You Alone
Lineup:
Gianni Pontillo – vocals
Herman Frank- guitar
Mike Pesin – guitar
Peter Pichl – bass guitar
Michael Wolpers – drums
