Reflection
The Battles I Have Won

Metal, due to the persistent bad taste that often characterizes it, is generally considered a genre not worth proposing even to one's worst enemy.

Yet despite these snobbish popular beliefs, TRVE METAL, specifically that of a Central European origin characterized by a wild epic-chivalric flair, can offer a sonic substance as raw as it is in its own way enjoyable, where bloody hand-to-hand duels are enacted in the dark woods of pre-Platonic Hellas: the sharp sound of blades in the act of piercing the shredded flesh of the defeated.

And so, what could possibly be better than this thunderous fresco of rustic metal before its time, completely out of sync, that draws with full biceps-and-broadswords from the warlike-medieval blueprint so dear to the indefatigable Manowar or the more titanic Savatage: the cover seems to reaffirm the archaic imperative DEATH TO FALSE METAL engraved on basalt as a warning to anyone who might dare to betray the sacred cause with unacceptable genre mixings (typical of weak minds).

Artisanally produced a few months ago in a steel forge atop Mount Olympus, these cyclopes of Greek origin offer us the unmissable opportunity not only to retrieve from the dusty trunk in the attic the indestructible period armors but also the baggy knickers with thick goat fur, as well as to sharpen the halberds to try to stand up to the detractors of this precious piece of tungsten-laminated modernity.

The production of the work is increasingly gruff and Spartan: while on one hand, this might represent a limitation, on the other, it allows the album not to sound exactly the same as the other 142,365 metal albums released in the last six months: whatever the fragment listened to, you can tell it's them and no one else.
Although the references have been clearly outlined, the sound is less monolithic than one might assume: in the ever-changing cauldron, there are also references to the early refined Crimson Glory, Fifth Angel, and similar metal militia. The vocalist, in a perpetual battle to emerge over the cathartic surrounding instrumentation, ventures out in search of immortal and catchy choruses: the timbre, for those familiar with it, can remind one of Klaus Meine from the good old days, in a more belligerent key.

To say that this type of cartoonish para-pseudo musical scenarios is (artistically) dead & buried for eons and only capable of reiterating worn-out and exhausted tropes is the classic discovery of the hot water.
As a rusty metaller, this doesn't prevent one from finding tracks as derivative as they are mighty whose sounds refer to genre cornerstones such as "Into Glory Ride" or fragments filled with ambivalent atmospheres balanced between sharp guitars and apotropaic melodic openings as seen in the gripping "Lord Of The Wind" or even in the anthemic Song of the Sirens, also honored by Tim Buckley, who, as is well known, has always been a great admirer of it.
Of Reflection, I mean.