Reinforcer
Prince of the Tribes

Even as a reviewer for Hallowed with its rather narrow area of music focus you can get thrown between pretty different things. I recently wrote about seventies psychedelic Space Rock and now I take on the clutches of war inspired heavy metal. With a bombastic looking artwork German heavy metallers Reinforcer hope to march their way into the metal scene and make an impression. But will they? Well, the cover pretty much reveals what to expect, there aren’t any surprises coming from Reinforcer.

Prince of the Tribes is a fairly typical album of the power/heavy metal style of music, I used three bands that the label described as similar. But I could just as well have used bands like Manowar, Wizard, Rebellion, Mystic Prophecy, Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Helloween, Majesty, and a lot more but I don’t feel like writing any more band names now. The vocalist has authority in his powerful voice, and the sound of the album is quite powerful. There are those bombastic and epic choruses that are usually there when the warmongers of metal write their stories of brave knights and warriors – some even go to sea. I wrote about surprises earlier, anyone not thinking that all of this album is extremely familiar can’t have heard any heavy metal at all. Good thing that they keep the album short as we kind of get the variation of songs that can be expected, and more songs would probably have been too much.

They know the craft of heavy metal well, and fortunately for them many heavy metal fans don’t want anything that sounds new or fresh. Prince of the Tribes is a decent, pretty good album with songs that are powerful and true to form. The problem with that is the fact that a multitude of other artists have done the same and I for one find it pretty boring when I hear a new album that sounds the same as many others I have heard – it is more fun with bands and albums that provide something that feels fresh and exciting. I’d rather have something terrible that tries to do something fresh than something good that presses the same old buttons, it is more fun to be surprised and not get what you expect. This is pretty much what you can expect, there are nothing to surprise anyone on this album, from the artwork you can deduce how the album will sound – and your deduction will be correct.

For those who just wants another heavy metal album, it may be an okay choice. The artwork makes the vinyl copy a bit attractive, but had I gotten a physical copy to review it would have been put away now. The next person who would then handle that album would be the archaeologist who found my pile of average albums, and they will probably be a way for future archaeologists to figure out the music of our world today as those albums will probably be as new a thousand or so years from now.

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