Hell Blade
Artist: Saint
Label: Retroactive Records
Time: 10 tracks/38:58 min.

Let's see how far in to my review for the new Hell Blade album by Saint I can get before I get cliché and compare them to Judas Priest. Every review is doing that, and I do not want... oh, wait...

I guess you just can not get away from the comparison. Saint knows not only their strengths, but also what their fans want.  Some people will say this is just derivative and ignore it. These are the people do not get that many metal bands - like Iron Maiden, Black Sabbath, and Judas Priest - have become sub-genres themselves. For bands in these sub-genres, the idea is not to re-invent rock music as well know it, but to play with enough passion, energy and skill to make your album worth listening to.

Saint excels at passion, energy and skill on this album.  I have been itching for some good power metal for a while and this album fully scratches that (and more). They even manage to throw in some thrash influences here and there, while steering clear of becoming too shiny, polished, and melodic.  Rob Rock does a great job at this ­ but this is the rougher, rawer side of power metal.

Recent Saint albums have been good, but not quite at the same level of their first three albums.  Hell Blade can easily fit alongside any Saint album from the 1980s, and for people like me ­ who do not have a nostalgic attachment to those earlier albums ­ it can even possibly surpass all of Saint's albums.

Saint also continues to explore apocalyptic lyrics (among others). Let's face it, Judas Priest inspired-metal was just made for rocking the apocalypse. Of course, every once and a while, some of the lyrics just do not quite click:

Here comes the new world order
Devil's on his shoulder
Start running for the border

If it is a new WORLD order ­ what border are you going to run to?

Ahh, heavy metal... what are you gonna do? Cheese is part of the package. I have always loved cheese myself. Without passion, the cheese sounds like a bad joke. Coming from Saint, you just smile and keep banging your head.

By Matt Crosslin (January 22, 2010)

Matt Crosslin - editor of  Down the Line http://www.downthelinezine.com, web design,  occasional writer
I'm a major music fan with a great wife that cheerfully indulges my taste in "weird" music.  My wife and I love to travel to strange lands, but I can't get her to join me in watching obscure SciFi TV series from start to finish.