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Grand Magus – Triumph and Power

Jun 19 • International News, Reviews, The Slumbering Ent • 2855 Views • No Comments on Grand Magus – Triumph and Power

Jayaprakash Satyamurthy reviews the new album from Grand Magus titled Triumph and Power, released via Nuclear Blast.

Artwork by Anthony Roberts (Check more of his stuff here)

If you’re anything like me, you like the idea of power metal, but find the execution lacking a lot of the time. Apart from the heyday of US power metal, when every band was a veritable posse of feisty Cimmerian berserkers, there is a tendency for the genre to get bogged down in faux medeival minstrelsy, AoR tinged balladry and the same old polka melodies that have been ruining much of mainstream Euro metal for a while.

So it’s often the bands who hit upon the power metal aesthetic aslant, as it were, that hit the spot. Cases in point would be Doomsword and Ironsword, both of whom have imbibed healthy doses of epic metal, doom and even some of that Motörheadboogie in the latter case.

Grand Magus fits firmly into this slot. Billed as stoner or doom metal, for my money they fulfill the promise of the pnrase ‘power metal’ more consistently than many of the usual suspects. Which is not to say they’re beyond reproach – I thought the two albums after the mighty ‘Iron Will’ were very forgettable. On their fifthalbum, ‘Triumph and Power’, however, they deliver a fun, catchy album that delivers on the stirring, anthemic promise of its title. Heck, the album even has the word ‘power’ in its title!

The album gets off to a roaring start with ‘On hooves of gold’ which moves from an already catchy verse to an even more soaring and memorable chorus. ‘Steel versus steel’ is even better, and is about Michael Moorcock’s albino doomdealer, Elric, to boot. ‘Dominator’, about a tyrant and the tyrant in waiting who will depose him is a song that fairly bursts with the spirit of all those classic metal songs whose names end with the -ator suffix, you know the ones I mean. ‘The naked and the dead’ is another standout as is the epic, atmospheric album closer ‘The hammer will bite’.The remaining tracks are never less than serviceable and the instrumental ‘Ymer’ is one of the few marching tracks on a metal album that conjures an epic sense of valour and pathos rather than sounding like a rejected RPG theme song.

A few things make this album really work. First of all the guitar and bass both sounding crunchy and raw, not overprocessed at all. JB’s voice is rich and deep but can soar as well and the vocals and riffs capture both the thrill and glory of the mainly martial themes, and the underlying sense of tragic fate that marks all the great sagas. Most of all, this is a fun album. It won’t change your life, but it never overstays its welcome, and delivers a fierce, hook laden, stirring collection of metal songs. Triumph and Power indeed. And not a single sub-Maidenesque polka in hearing!