Label: Symmetry Records
Release date: March 5, 2021
Production: Bob Katsionis
Album length: 52.06 min
Genre: Power Metal
Rating: 8.5/10
Warrior Path are a relatively new band playing music carved straight out of the power metal boom and resurrection, those years around the turn of the millennium. So twenty years ago, give or take a year or so. Once you run your eyes over the quartet’s lineup and spot Bob Katsionis, the band’s background gets a lot clearer. The guy is a sought-after multi-instrumentalist, producer and composer with some seriously impressive mileage behind him, and he’s active in several musical projects and bands at once. Out of his endless list of activities, the ones worth singling out are Firewind and Serious Black, both of which he has since left, and Outloud, who he’s still loyal to today. After the Greek musician walked away from Firewind and Serious Black, there was more creative room to implant his own musical ideas, so he put together a new band, which served up a self-titled debut back in 2019. In this lineup he took the lead guitarist spot, which is only right, since his guitar talents were always pushed into the background in Firewind.
“The Mad King” continues the musical direction of the debut, which is strictly devoted to hyper-musical catchiness, a wealth of highly penetrating melodies and soaring vocal lines. A heap of theatrical passages and ornaments wraps around a series of fascinating power metal phrases that keep the debut’s wit and sharpness and easily sidestep the danger of worn-out cliché. The tracks, with their arrangements decked out in all the right ways, deliver a fittingly greedy mix of punch and the sought-after ultra-bombastic pomp. Katsionis has brought in Swedish vocalist Daniel Heiman, who has an outstanding vocal range and is highly expressive whether he’s gritting it out through clenched vocal cords or unleashing all the (horse)power and igniting with a clean, almost operatic, highly commanding voice.
Most of the songs are very fast, which is a big part of the album’s charm. No weepy or syrupy moments to sap its high kinetic energy and breakneck drive. Even in the mid-tempo tracks, like Avenger, Warrior Path dig into a gloomy, occult sense of doom, accompanied by the aforementioned pomp. In terms of arrangements, Warrior Path have studied the sonic elements and contents in great detail, using them to stock and enrich their guitar phrases with precision and insight. That element shows just how experienced the band’s main man Bob Katsionis is. So the musical prose of those guitar phrases, even though it speaks in predictable and well-tested terms, still comes across as thoroughly gripping and convincing.
Warrior Path will be checked out by every metal fan trained in the neck-breaking tradition, which is guaranteed by this efficient recycling package of the power metal that fired up the global metal scene especially during the revival years of 1996-2005. A great production and the camaraderie of a quartet that guarantees flawless, spotless execution of the musical material, a high yield of dramatic theatricality and hypnotic pomp, sudden swings of mood, with no shortage of leaping reconciliation between the phrasing and the calmer (even acoustic) interludes, add up to an album that spins by in a flash over its good 50 minutes. The razor-sharp, uncompromising barrage of guitar salvos at breakneck speed, suitably weighed down with the anthemic epicness of gloomy marches, puts to work every hard skull that long ago got well and truly worn in by the harmony of old-school metal tradition. As said, “The Mad King” rides phenomenally on the ramparts of pure-blooded power metal heart, true to the old continent’s die-hard style.
Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Tracklist:
1. It Has Begun
2. The Mad King
3. His Wrath Will Fall
4. Beast of Hate
5. Don’t Fear the Unknown
6. Savage Tribe
7. Avenger
8. Out from the Shadows
9. Neverending Fight
10. Last Tale
Lineup:
Daniel Heiman – vocals
Bob Katsionis – bass, guitar, keyboards
Andreas Sinanoglou – guitar
Dave Rundle – drums
