Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Steve Grimmett`s Grim Reaper
Label: Dissonance Records
Release: 2016
Length: 50:29
Rating: 4/5
Yep, it’s real. After 29 years! With the release of »Walking in the Shadows«, we can safely call this a welcome successor to the legacy of a cult NWOBHM offshoot from Great Britain. Grim Reaper, of course! Vocalist Steve Grimmett, who goes all the way back to the notorious days of the classic Grim Reaper, is still in the band. That’s why the little disclaimer up front, »Steve Grimmett’s«, is more than welcome: it tells the casual listener right away that there’s a tiny cosmetic flaw in the whole thing. If founding member and guitarist Nick Bowcott were in the lineup too, this album would have come out simply as Grim Reaper. And although there’s no bad blood between the old friends, and heaven forbid any war over ownership or copyright on the name, Grimmett rightly decided to put the album out as »Steve Grimmett’s Grim Reaper«. Bowcott, by the way, regularly pops up as a special guest at the new Grim Reaper’s live shows.
The riffs are clearly hunting for a stylistic and arrangement link back to the eighties, and they pull it off more than decently. The main difference between the new record and those three cult classics that have by now become folk favorites is that »Walking in the Shadows« is actually the most consistent album of all four in terms of quality. Meaning there are no big swings in quality from song to song, whereas the eighties albums delivered evergreen artistic peaks that metalheads still happily bang their necks to today, but also the odd totally superfluous stinker you wouldn’t miss for a second. Sure, »Walking in the Shadows« may not hit with the same punch as Grim Reaper in the eighties, but Grimmett and his new crew clearly weren’t about to allow themselves any compositional slip-ups.
So »Walking in the Shadows« grabs you with a big swing across its entire running time, an energetic showcase of seasoned craftsmen who bet everything on a well-built riff, a crafty seasoning of harmonic ornaments, white-hot solo escapades, and, on top of it all, the dominant presence of top-notch vocal delivery, courtesy of Grimmett, naturally. Over the years he’s lost only a little of the piercing power with which he thrillingly tore through the extreme vocal heights in the mid-eighties. Grimmett has kept the power and the range well into his mature years, and that’s what matters! The lyrics take us back to the NWOBHM boom too, that is, the turn of the seventies into the eighties. Occultism, vampirism, demonism! All over the place. Old school, then, transplanted into 2016!
The production is pleasingly alive and nicely contrasted. The bass drives through the character of the songs with a concrete, melodic, full-bodied stride, while the guitars could carry a bit more massive sound in the background, whereas Grimmett’s vocals sit dead center, shouting down everything that can be shouted down. Even too much. In fact, even the »middle eight« passages, and the otherwise tasty solo excursions, end up in second place precisely because of Grimmett’s fanatical vocal delivery, which he pushes even into the passages between verses and choruses. The man bites like he’s got the passion of a seventeen-year-old boiling inside him!
No ballads. Great. The departures from the old-school heavy metal premise of the ossified British school (as far as there are any) lean toward hard rock, which distantly links some points on the album to Grimmett’s former band Lionsheart, while also strengthening Grimmett’s vocal character, which further shows his career-long inspiration by Ronnie James Dio (I’m Coming For You, From Hell, Call Me in the Morning).
In short: the album is excellent. We can take it as the return of Grim Reaper, since a new incarnation with Grimmett in the lineup can’t credibly be justified with any successor other than a potential Grimmett and Bowcott reunion. The album took a good while to make. The songs hit with equal force and hold the required high level of quality, backed by detailed arrangement packaging. This is an album that will stand shoulder to shoulder with the band’s cult eighties classics and work brilliantly live on stages around the world. An album that will win over fans of the old Grim Reaper, and one that every follower of the good old British school of metal will claim as their own right away. Let’s hope the band gets itself on a proper tour and that we manage to catch them on some stage (at least relatively) close to Slovenia.
Steve Grimmett’s Grim Reaper – Walking in the Shadows (official video):
Lineup
Steve Grimmett – vocals
Richie Yeates – guitar
Chaz Grimaldi – bass
Paul White – drums
Production
Steve Grimmett
Track list
01. Wings Of Angels
02. Walking In The Shadows
03. Reach Out
04. I’m Coming For You
05. From Hell
06. Call Me In The Morning
07. Rock Will Never Die
08. Temptation
09. Thunder
10. Now You See Me
11. Blue Murder
12. Come Hell Or High Water
