FIREWIND
Days Of Defiance
Century Media Records CD
In the decade when Power Metal was diminished to nearly a joke and was living solely on strenghth of old scene guards, Firewind seems to be almost an anomaly with the amount of success they have recieved with the years of hard work and they are certainly the band that has gained the biggest status in this field in the last few years along with Sabaton (who are leagues under in terms of quality, IMHO). Firewind have polished their tasteful brand of rocking Power Metal release after the release and their upswing exploded in 2008’s masterpiece „The Premonition“, the album chock full of highest quality songs („all killer, no filler", as they say). I have witnessed their live performance with Kamelot where they almost stole the show from headliners; it seems that Firewind have reached the top in that period and there is only one way from there so I was almost scared to hear will they continue with such force on their new offering „Days of defiance“. One more thing that ignited the fear was one of the breaking news in metal world of last year: main man Gus G was hired as a guitar player for none other than Ozzy, that gig is so huge and demanding that I naturally expected that he will put less effort in Firewind for the sake of almighty money. Finally „Days of defiance“ is in front of me to prove if i was right or wrong and my notions were not true... partially, but let me go one step at a time. From the initial first couple of listenings I was dissapointed but soon after I figured out that it was beacuse I still couldn't get out of my head hymns like "Into the fire" and "Angels forgive me" which spring into my mind on the sole mention of Firewind’s name. I let the album lay a little bit, came back to it couple of days later and when „The premonition“ started to fade from my mind and I have realised that Firewind had to go on I have seen the entire picture. First off, I should say that Firewind didn’t change a thing in their approach so on „Days of defiance“: you will be treated again with not fluffy Power Metal with guitar of Gus G leading the whole story (as it should be with any proper metal band), strong drum rhythms (I should mention here that Firewind has new man on the drum stool named Michael Ehre) and clever use of keyboards. The album is notably a bit heavier than the latest offering and carries Firewind more on the pure Heavy territory which goes hand in hand with more aggressive lyrical themes, in the words of Gus G himself, which can be clearly seen on the opener „The ark of lies“. But those of you who are into the more anthemic sound of this band should be pleased with singalong numbers „Kill in the name of love“ or „Embrace the sun“, the album goes all over from instrumental „SKG“ where Gus G shows his chops and trades solos with keayboard player Bob Katsionis to ballad like „Broken“ in slower tempo. So you see that „Days of defiance“ features right amount of variety between the tracks so what’s the problem? In my opinion, the album goes just a bit long for its sake as it is very hard to keep up the level of needed intensity in almost one hour and over the course of 13 tracks so the album starts on high note and with the passing of time the intensity falls down a little bit. One should try to find right measure between album length, number of songs and songwriting to obtained maximum possbile result and Firewind failed on this field a bit this time. Nevertheless, "Days of defiance" is one more worthy admission in Firewind's catalogue and they have yet to dissapoint me with their albums. This just isn't their best but they have stayed successfully on their line; anyway, for the majority of Power Metal scene "Days of defiance" as it is represents the quality they only can dream of...