Friday Morning Metal – Bruce Dickinson Afterglow of Ragnarok

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Oooh Bruce Dickinson solo stuff, presented in Necrovision!

The song starts off almost like melodic death metal or something. I was half expecting him to start with a growl, even though that’s very much not his vibe. But once it kicks in, it definitely has the Bruce vibes that are part & parcel of his work. Big rock operatic vocals, a solid chorus, the works. There’s a pretty great vocal solo/interlude

The video itself is pretty rad. I guess some dude crosses over between worlds and gets tortured by some occultists? And then Bruce does sorta kung fu toward a dude in a gas mask (I don’t think that was the intent but it was cut that way sorta.) But it’s part of a larger story involving the Mandrake Project which makes me excited to see more of it. Maybe the main dude is a seventh son of a seventh son!

Friday Morning Metal – Angelus Apatrida – We Stand Alone

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Nothing like nutso speed/thrash metal to rouse you out of a post-Thanksgiving food coma. Angelus Apatrida is from Albacete Spain, and they bring a great level of bash your brains in drumming, chuggy guitars, and kickass vocals. This is definitely getting added to my “must concentrate, need fast metal” rotation.

The dueling guitar solo halfway through is pretty great, though I guess it’s a guitar duo. It’s fun to hear two guitars work through a solo and complement each other like that.

Also Google translate says Angelus Apatrida is Greek for “Stateless Angel” so I learned a thing today!

Friday Morning Metal – Impellitteri – 17th Century Chicken Pickin

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Classical music has been a part of metal since forever. Where else can you get a killer noodly guitar solo without having to make it yourself? But then you get guys like Chris Impelliteri who takes the style and turns it metal.

I think there’s a harpsichord in this, which helps reinforce the 17th centuriness of it. But it’s a soaring noodly two and a half minutes of fun. I assume this is what the Skwisgaar Skwigelf Advanced Fast Hand Finger Wizard Master Class would be.

And I really can’t talk about incorporating classical music into metal without mentioning the time Ghenghis Khan totally ravaged Oshmans.

Friday Morning Metal – Flotsam and Jetsam – Demolition Man

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Bjørn Spotify is a really cool dude. Every week, he tells me to listen to music, and sometimes it’s lame. Like a band called Wolf, but they’re not the Black Wings Wolf, they’re EDM with cat noises sampled in there. And then sometimes I get to hear the band Flotsam and Jetsam and this song Demolition Man, and I give Bjørn another week to wow me with music.

These guys have been thrashing it up since 1981, and at least as of 2019 they were still thrashing it up. The song is big and crunchy with super driving drums. The vocals fit in pretty well, especially assuming this dude has been singing like this for 40+ years. I dig the super noodly guitar solo too. All in all, this is a great song to turn on when you need something loud and fast to block out meeting requests and synergy talk.

The video of the creepy ass science dude encouraging the little girl’s mind powers is pretty great. And true to form, he’s too evil so she uses her mind powers against him! It’s a bummer there’s no Stallone or Wesley Snipes, maybe they’re in the followup.

Friday Morning Metal – Striker – Circle of Evil

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Since 2007, Striker’s been bringing the heat, straight out of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada! And they released a new song with a spooky music video on Halloween!

Circle of Evil is a solid, balls-to-the-wall throwback metal track. The vocal harmonizing on the chorus is fantastic, more songs need harmonizing! The break into the solo is great, just enough of a gap to really land into it and shred.

It’s also great to see such mullety hair and dirty staches in a metal video. Doesn’t always have to be big flowy hair in front of a fan so you look more epic during the solo. Mullets seem to be coming back, because we can’t do anything new anymore. And that’s okay, looking like a reliever from the 1989 Pittsburgh Pirates has to be pretty fun.

This song is great, I’m a big fan of 80’s metal, so when I get more of it I’m pretty stoked. So give it a listen. And then bug your favorite local music booker to get this band in your town.

Friday Morning Metal – Cortége – Horizons

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Cortége plays, as they describe it, post-western Doom/Drone metal. They’re a now three-piece band what includes big standing bells? Oh, according to the youtube description they’re “tubular bells” and they give a very tubular vibe to their songs. When I hear their music, it has a very moody space western vibe to it. Like if there’s a Cad Bane show, they could score it.

I saw these guys a couple months ago at the Shakedown, and they’re a hell of a lot of fun live. The music kind of looms, and the mix they had live really shook my guts with the ominous vibes coming from their Super Assman stack.

So go put your duster on, hop on your landspeeder, and crank some Cortége!

Friday Morning Metal – DragonForce – Power of the Triforce

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DragonForce has been drip releasing tracks from their upcoming “Warp Speed Warriors” album, and this week’s is an opus to Nintendo’s favorite elf-based series. And while it has a real solid DragonForce vibe, something about them doing a song about vidya games is a little odd to me.

The video is cheesy and fun, with the guitarists apparently able to shoot lasers or something from their gear, which is great to see. In general, this is a standard-bearing DragonForce song, with Herman Li’s by now trademarked squeadlies and meadlies. Also apparently the singer is worthy of wielding the master sword.

I feel like, with different lyrics, this song could’ve been pulled from any of their older albums, like they had this framed out for Sonic Firestorm but couldn’t figure out what vocals to put on top, so they shelved it. And I appreciate that after hearing the departure that is Doomsday Party, I was worried they were drifting into that kind of party metal sound you hear from later Alestorm, for instance. Leaning on Zelda references for a song is interesting, but also it feels, to me, like pandering to the overlap in the Venn diagram of metalheads and video gamers (it might be concentric circles.)

Again, this song slaps, and I’m sure it’ll be a big hit when they’re on tour. Maybe I’m just being a grumpy old by bristling at the lyrics and thinking of Valley of the Damned or Operation Ground & Pound.

Friday Morning Metal – Judas Priest – Panic Attack

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NEW JUDAS PRIEST! Panic Attack was released this morning or last night or something, and it shreds just as hard as their recent offerings. I had to look it up again, Halford is 72, and he’s still putting out kickass vocal performances. Not quite as bombastic as, say, Resurrection, but that came out when he was a spry 50 years old.

Both of the guitar solos are properly noodly and soaring, like one would expect from Judas Priest. PANIC ATTACK PANIC ATTACK. Definitely looking forward to the rest of the tracks when the album comes out.

Friday Morning Metal – Dethklok – Aortic Desecration

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YES YES Y E S!!! MORE DETHKLOK!

Ahead of the new movie, Army of the Doomstar, Brendan Small and Dethklok have released a new song, and it shreds just as hard as any other Dethklok song. Even with what I think is a ten year gap they’re still bringing it. So long as those doofuses at Warner don’t nuke it before release, this will be a kickass album to go with another kickass album, and also a kickass movie!

The vocals are a bit different. I’m not sure if that’s just because it’s hard to do the growl, or if it’s been a while and Brendan’s trying something different, but it’s a bit noticeable. But otherwise there’s some awesome shreddy bits, mega drumming, and I think there might be some polymeters. Like in Guts, Punch, Balls, Throw up. Great song there.

Anyway, enjoy some Dethklok. BRÜÜÜÜÜÜTALLLLL.

Friday Morning Metal – Dolly Parton and Halford – Bygones

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So Dolly Parton got inducted into the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame, despite stating she felt she hadn’t earned the right to be inducted. As a result, she’s making a rock album featuring tons of guests like Stevie Nicks, Steve Perry, and Rob Halford.

And today she released Bygones, her song including Rob Halford. It sounds a bit like Halford’s solo work, which is great. Good driving drums, chuggy riffs, lotta back & forth vocals. I could dig a whole album of this.

It’s also notable that a lot of the songs on her upcoming album are covers, but this one is an original.

You can check out the song here if the embed below is still not working.