It’s been almost 5 years since our very own Dushan Petrossi, also the man behind Magic Kingdom, released the splendid “Hordes Of The Brave” album under the Iron Mask moniker. For me, that disc, an impressive slab of neo-classical metal, still is among the best albums ever released by Lars Eric Mattsson’s Lion Music label.
As the genre and many of its protagonists with it are often criticized of re-inventing the wheel, those 5 years of utter silence are not a bad thing. As long as artists keep on delivering quality, such long waits are soon forgotten. As is the case with “Shadow Of The Red Baron”, released by Lion Music as a CD/DVD package with superb artwork by Belgian artist Eric Philippe.
Petrossi retained half the line-up of its predecessor: Goetz Mohre, nicknamed “Val Halla Jr.” on vocals and Vassili Moltchanov (Cryme, Magic Kingdom) are still present. Drummer Erik Stout (Vengeance, Joe Stump) and Andreas Lindahl (Wuthering Heights, The Murder Of My Sweet) are new. His old friend Roma Siadletski takes care of the occasional extreme vocals.
While “Hordes Of The Brave” contained lots of up-tempo tunes, the overall focus on the new album still is on neo-classical hard rock and metal – think of Malmsteen, Rainbow and the likes – but the more mid-tempo and slightly less progressive variant.
Eye-catcher and first “single” off “Shadow Of The Red Baron” is the extremely catchy “Forever In The Dark”, a song that reminds me of the glorious eighties. A simple, but nice video clip of this track is included on the DVD. Other highlights include the fast opening title track, the haunting “Sahara”, the pirates’ anthem “Black Devil Ship”, the rocking “We Will Meet Again” and power ballad “My Angel Is Gone”.
We already knew that Petrossi is able to write catchy and melodic song material and this album proves this statement more than any of its predecessors. Don’t be scared off by the neo-classical tag that undoubtedly hangs around Dushan Petrossi’s neck if you’re not really into the genre. There’s enough material on “Shadow Of The Red Baron” that can keep any melodic hard rock and metal fan going for a while. (SL)
 

---

Members' opinions

post your opinion

Nightman (on 8/04/10) A good solid album but is not as good as their previous album.   powerstationbxl (on 30/03/10) a great release ,strong songs,superb song writing,top class musicians , and it stays in your head,best melodic belgian metal band of all time!!! these guys deserve a huge worldwide succes,nothing less!!!   Jeffwasp (on 25/03/10) B-O-R-I-N-G.... I took it out of my player before I made it all the way through. Sorry to disagree with everyone here, but this is NOT metal... more like pompish rock. Yuck!   alexander (on 16/03/10) La verdad es que no conocia mucho de esta banda y me agradó encontrar un muy buen disco ante lo desconocido que eran para mi, hice una reseña del disco en mi web, obviamente en español, dejo el link de la resña por si alguien quiere verla http://soundsofrockcriticas.blogspot.com/2010/02/iron-mask-shadow-of-red-baron.html   Modulator (on 17/02/10) Best so far! Great songs!   loudnes (on 15/02/10) Super...Very good!   astonbob (on 14/02/10) killer   madgarry (on 14/02/10) Its a killer,just buy it if you love neo classical metal..   WOLF 359 (on 13/02/10) Very melodic Rainbowesque rock, with great musicianship and some excellent vocals. Lot's of people are also comparing this to Mr. Malmsteen, imho Malmsteen wishes he could write stuff as good as this.   YNGWIEVIKING (on 13/02/10) Agree with Metal Mark ! Except that i think the vocals are more in the Russell ALLEN kind of way,maybe the Vocals handled by Oliver HARTMANN are more in the JSS tradition I'll rate it lower though, but it's a nice RISING FORCE/RAINBOW 's Palliative****1/2   Metal Mark (on 12/02/10) Very good neo-classical metal in the vein of Yngwie Malmsteen's 'Marching Out.' Even a Jeff Scott Soto-style vocal. Classy and classic!

 

---

Post your opinion

You have to be registered and logged in to post your opinion. Log in.