I don’t know if I’ve heard Leverage before. They’ve been around since 2002, and bring a pretty big power metally sound. So powerful that they have an electric violinist in the band. Can’t go wrong when there’s non-standard instruments in a metal band, like a hurdy gurdy. According to encyclopedia metallum, they delve in themes of life and nature, and I guess Shooting Star is leaning on life.

The song has a bit of a twangy country vibe to the melody before diving headlong into a big metal chug. Kinda has Blind Guardian vibes with the vocals. They do a good job shifting from standard power metally vibes to the twangy melody. The guitar solo shreds mightily and transitions to a combo guitar/keyboard noodlefest. At four and a half minutes, the song doesn’t waste too much time while still being chock full of great metal staples. All in all it’s a rad song and I look forward to more Leveraging.

The video starts with the singer getting kidnapped or something? So they send their electric violinist to go find him and pay the beefy ransom. While she’s looking for him, the singer makes eyes at some lady, who ends up helping the violinist find him. Talk about good fortune there. And with him freed they’re able to get back to the studio to record! They don’t really indicate why he got abducted. He also left his kickass hat in the sorta jail. Maybe he got abducted so they could steal his hat. Or he stole someone’s hat and they made him leave it. But the rat really likes the hat, so that’s nice.