Thor
Metal Avenger

Powerful rocker Thor is back with a new offering, smashing his giant hammer down on the metal scene. Metal Avenger is what this new offering is called, Thor and his many guests are making this fifteen-track story that takes nearly one hour to play through. The cover looks like something out of the Manowar catalogue or something like that, not really interesting if you look at it. Somehow you have to imagine that they are interesting as Thor have a story reaching all the way back the seventies and several albums to the name. With that in mind it may be good that I didn’t really know the band before hearing this one so that I could look at it from a fresh perspective, but then again it may not really matter as I have heard many heavy metal albums before.

Musically it is stereotypical heavy metal, if you imagine heavy metal in your mind – that is how it sounds. They offer the three-chord verses, pretty catchy choruses and everything that you expect, so it is more or less what you expect from an album of the style. Relatively well produced, the singer is average at best but fits pretty well into the overall picture. They have good guests and all of those things, that is good as it gives the album a little more dynamics and all of that. That also makes the long playing time somewhat more bearable and that is always good but 57 minutes is still a very long playing time.

The album is quite solid seen as an overall thing, not overly fantastic and rather predictable and ridiculous but still entertaining and solid. I think fans of heavy metal will find this album very good and interesting, after all this is what they listen to all the time – there is no difference really. With that name one would imagine thunderous and earth shattering hammer blows that shatters the metal world but there is nothing like that here, it is typical heavy metal made very well and their best feature is that they do offer some great songs, some that sounds a little different which is good. So if you are a fan of heavy metal you will find this album quite appealing.

So, as I stated before there are some really strong songs – most are pretty average but T.H.O.R. and Stars upon Stars are quite brilliant while things like the title track are quite average and cliché. So, in the end there are some great highlight but overall we have a decent but very solid album that is sure to appeal to heavy metal fans but maybe not so much to those who want to hear something fresh and exciting.

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