Medevil
Conductor of Storm

Perhaps they are a tad devilish, or spelling might not be their strongest quality – that is what I think when taking on this album by the Canadian quintet called Medevil. Conductor of Storms is the name of the debut I have in front of me now, and my reflection is that it looks kind of retro, like something from the eighties. It isn’t only the looks that are blasts from the past, the music seems to be fetched from those times as well.

With classic riffs that have been heard on albums by Accept, Iron Maiden, Metal Church, Dio, and many others like them, add to that catchy choruses and they push all the right buttons for fans of this era. Retro-lovers will enjoy this stereotype of a heavy metal album, it is rather great in my opinion with a strong vocalist and good production – the production is by the way the one thing setting this album apart from the albums released in that era. Oh, the originality sets them apart as well when considering that doing music like this in the eighties was relatively original but it can hardly be described as that nowadays.

I think that it is a strong album for what it is, the thing is though that this kind of music had its time and it feels kind of pointless to keep reviving it as it was good enough then and if you want to rejuvenate that music there are already so many alternatives so one more doesn’t really make sense. Not to me who review stuff from a logical standpoint anyway, I know that these guys will have their fans and they play on the fact that so many people are overly afraid of change and does want their music as well as their world as it was – that could be commercially a pretty good way to go if you get good reviews and plenty of attention which they deserve more than many of their peers considering that this is one of the better retro albums I have heard in a while.

I like Medevil’s debut album, it is entertaining and good but I wouldn’t call it original or memorable. But it is easy to review considering that you could say just one thing about it: do you like eighties metal? If the answer is yes I can almost assure you that you’ll like this album. But no matter how good it is, I find it difficult as a critic to overlook the fact that this kind of music has already been done to death.

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