Stormwarrior
Norsemen

Stormwarrior has been giving us their ”olde power metal” for a while now with the debut coming almost twenty years ago. They found a niche that not too many did with their feisty speedy power metal inspired by the debut album of Helloween. The problem is that they have been repeating that same concept and it isn’t really interesting enough to keep anyone interested for six albums, some EP and some live releases. This new album of course has a Viking ship on it and is named Norsemen probably from those guys sailing around the world doing heroic stuff and stuff of legends, at least in the mythologies of Stormwarrior. I liked their early stuff but I think the latest one was a bit too much of the same so I kind of lost interest and now they come with something new, hopefully they set sail somewhere else.

Speedy power metal, it is more or less the same style as they’ve had for all their albums. Ramcke sounds more or less the same and the themes are the same, is it really a new album? The production is okay, the sound could have had a bit more punch and the vocals could have been better but it is kind of what you expect. They offer no surprises and the familiar themes shine through all the way, not too much variation through the tracks and I think that the playing time is a bit on the long side. They could have skipped the ending eleven-minute track and with that manage to keep the album a lot more sensible in terms of playing time – but journeys on the Viking ships were long and arduous so why not make listening to an album with such a ship on the cover the same?

Can’t say that I am impressed by what I have been treated to with this album, it is kind of the same as the previous album. Completely uninteresting from the creative point of view and quite dull as the songs are just variations on the same theme as before, there is no sense of novelty, no sense of adventure just the same as have been done through the yore. Those who liked the previous album will most likely like this one as well; there are no big differences between this one and the previous. The Norsemen will not manage to invade my record collection, sure the artwork is pretty nice but that isn’t enough and there are no great or impressive songs, just a collection of dull generic metal songs.

It is the same olde that echoes through the speakers once more and perhaps it is impressive to remain stoic for decades, but an artist need to evolve to remain relevant as people tend to grow tired of being exposed to the same stuff over and over. So I take my broadsword and cut this record in half and then I burn it along with the evening’s catch, well I’d been a Viking I would have done that. The German Norsemen are capsizing once again and the only conclusion I can come to is that there are so many more interesting albums to chose from, this feels rather meaningless.

HHHHHHH