Iranian act Angband released their debut ‘Rising From Apadana’ back in 2008, but since their third album, 2012’ ‘Saved From The Truth’ there has been little activity. However, Mahyar Dean (guitars, bass) and Ramin Rahimi (drums) have been joined by singer Tim Aymar (Pharaoh) and just released their fourth full length. The press release says “Progressive Power Metal meet up with Persian folklore in a way, as if there were never two different origins, ” which immediately got me intrigued as I am always interested in forms of music coming from non-Western backgrounds so I put it on and sat back waiting to be impressed. Except I wasn’t.

Instead of progressive power metal what we have here is NWOBHM to which we have had the odd local wind instrument added. There is none of the complexity needed for prog metal, and none of the thrust and attack of power metal, while introductions often go on for way too long. Aymar has a good voice, but the material just is not here, and while at a push I may say there are some small elements of Angra on this release, there is little to get excited about. It is incredibly basic, and the result is that the listener soon starts to wonder just how long this is (43 minutes), and whether it would be okay to skip the rest of the tracks. But that is not the way I work so I ploughed all the way through hoping there was going to be something to get my teeth into later in the album, but there isn’t.

Rating: 5/10

Links:
https://angbandmetal.weebly.com/
https://www.pureunderground-records.com/