Dire Peril
The Extraterrestrial Compendium

Dire Peril comes with an extraterrestrial compendium that happens to be their first long player. They have a few EPs in the baggage of their spaceship and we have reviewed one of them, Queen of the Galaxy from 2014. The title track of that EP can be found on this album and Brittany Slayes repeats her role in that track. And on the subjects of guests, none other than the brilliant Arjen Anthony Lucassen does a guest appearance doing guitar solo and some vocals on the ending track Journey Beyond the Stars. And on the subject of Lucassen, there are similarities to his Star One project with the tracks being based on sci-fi movies, like Enemy Mine that is featured on his own Space Metal album and also the track he guests on that is based on 2010 and probably also 2001 that was actually called Journey Beyond the Stars before production of the film.

I think we can describe this as a power metal album with some progressive touches, you can probably also add Helion Prime and Star One to those three similar bands already listed. Perhaps it is stylewise not overly fresh but as they build their songs on sci-fi movies they each get their own character and this gives the band a fresh perspective and a fresher sound than most of their genre peers. The vocals are all very good, the riffs are powerful and the album goes at a good pace with strong variation and you never really loose attention. Strong production as well and I would say that Dire Peril has put together their most interesting production to date and that this long player is way more complete than any of their previous releases, a strong compendium perhaps.

Right from the opening track you notice that this album is really strong and the ending is quite excellent where the album ends with Arjen reads Bowman’s message that HAL sends before being destroyed in the latter stages of 2010. That last track Journey Beyond the Stars is the best one of the album and I guess that alone makes it kind of worthwhile, but all tracks have strong hit potential and none of them can be said to be even close to weak. I think this album is great. Is it worth a top ten spot of 2018? I don’t know, I review it now so I don’t want to compare it with the list I have already done but it would probably be close.

Entertainment and amusement is what I come to think of, it is great with sci-fi themed metal and they do it really well. But you don’t really need to care about sci-fi to find this album great as the great tracks speaks for themselves whether you bother to listen to the lyrics or not. I would probably get this album if it was available on vinyl, and I recommend that you check it out, as chances are very good that you will find it to be an excellent release. And it is a good way to start the reviews of 2019 by writing about great albums such as these; I can’t really complain about the start of the year this far. So, don’t forget to check out this album, it is a great compound for your extraterrestrial adventures.

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