Triumpher – Storming The Walls Review

Has anyone ever asked you the seemingly basic question, “Why do you like heavy metal?” Sometimes that question comes from a place of disgust, as in, “How can you listen to all that noise?” Sometimes it comes from a place of genuine curiosity, as in, “Can you help show me a window, an angle, a way in to understand this dense, puzzling artform?” But whatever the motivation behind the question, I have never found a good way to answer it.

My silly, prideful instinct is to fire back, “Have you ever asked someone, ‘Why do you like pop music?'” But the question is a fair one, because heavy metal wants to be set apart. It wants to be different, confrontational, iconoclastic, challenging. It wants the posers to leave the hall. But that’s an attitude, not an explanation, so the next time someone asks me why I like heavy metal, the best and simplest answer I can give is to sit them down and play them Storming the Walls.

If you’re in a hurry, here’s the punch line: Triumpher’s debut album Storming the Walls is 53 minutes of utterly flawless epic heavy metal.

Formed in Athens, Greece, by vocalist and bassist Antonis Vailas (aka Mars Triumph) in 2019, Storming the Walls is Triumpher’s first release of any kind, which makes its staggering level of quality even more unbelievable. No demo, no EP, no “pretty good” first album that shows future promise, just POW! and straight into the stratosphere. Vailas has the leading role here, because in addition to playing bass, singing, and serving as lyricist and primary songwriter, he also made the album’s excellent cover art. He is joined by guitarists Apostolos Papadimitriou and Christopher Tsakiropoulos and drummer John Votsis, each of whom provides a stunning performance.

Triumpher play with a huge range of tones and influences, but you still can’t really call their style much other than epic metal with a capital FUCK YES. These ten songs touch on weighty doom, speed-leaning power metal, trad-infused death metal, melodic black metal, and windswept Viking metal. The epic prefix is important, though, for the dramatic and sometimes cinematic way that Triumpher craft their music. Storming the Walls is a masterclass in guitar pyrotechnics, mesmerizing vocals, rich, independent bass, and inventively monstrous drumming, but it also overflows with instrumentation and detail that elevate the already powerful songwriting to a place of grandeur, battle, and triumph. Acoustic guitars, piano, gold-toned choral vocals, timpani, and subtle synths (the latter courtesy of George Emmanuel, also responsible for recording, mixing, and mastering the record) deepen the album without ever overpowering its core of thunderous heavy metal.

The album opens with “Journey/Europa Victrix,” which coasts in with moody acoustics and piano, but it serves primarily as an introduction to the huge range and electrifying power of Vailas’s vocals. It is also likely not accidental that this scene-setting makes similar moves to what “Shores in Flames” does on Bathory’s Hammerheart. Second track “The Thunderer,” then, is when the album really kicks into gear, barreling forward with hunger and a tumbling majesty. Vailas mixes sky-cracking wails with harsher snarling, and the guitars push things forward almost recklessly, such that the piece could sound either like the blackened power metal of Italy’s Stormlord or (especially in the chorus) the melancholy blackened heavy metal of Darkest Era.

In one of the album’s smartest moves, that fiery opening is followed immediately by the title track, which shifts gears dramatically into the album’s heaviest foray into epic doom, a stout yet glorious midpoint between Candlemass circa Nightfall and more modern fare like Atlantean Kodex or Battleroar. Indeed, throughout Storming the Walls, Triumpher call on their many halls of heroes, from the stately lineage of Candlemass, Solstice, and Scald on to the rougher-hewn metal of American trad warriors like Manilla Road, Cirith Ungol, Omen, and especially Manowar.

Triumpher’s similarity to Manowar should not be overstated, given that there is so much happening on this album, but it also cannot be denied. Triumpher plays with the same fevered determination, and they are just as likely as Manowar to split the difference between raucous, fist-pumping heavy metal thunder and elaborate, theatrical power/speed metal. On Storming the Walls, Triumpher lands closer to Manowar’s more epic face (especially unimpeachable classics like “Battle Hymns,” “Bridge of Death,” or “Gates of Valhalla”), but the real kicker is that Antonis Vailas often sounds so similar to Manowar’s Eric Adams that it’s uncanny. Vailas’s range is similarly vast, but it’s really when he nails the upper end of his register with a perfect balance of tonal clarity and sandpaper grit that the Adams (and also, by extension, the Ian Gillan) aspect bleeds through so wonderfully. (As if that wasn’t enough magic, Vailas has the skill and confidence to basically function as both Eric Adams AND Joey DeMaio with his vocalist/bassist/primary songwriter triple threat.)

Vailas’s vocal performance is commanding and wholly captivating across the album, from rapid-fire verses to soaring choruses, and from pensive spoken sections to multi-tracked choirs that sound like a pantheon of marble-hewn victors. In addition to Eric Adams, Vailas’s voice is sometimes reminiscent of Warrel Dane’s work in Sanctuary, and sometimes his piercing wail hits late-’70s Halford highs. He also weaves in an array of harsher vocals, but typically only briefly, and always in service of the song.

“Mediterranean Wrath” has a vocal melody that feels indebted to Messiah Marcolin, but the song itself is a nervy ball of dark, skittering energy; in fact, it’s maybe the closest the album gets to that Sanctuary vibe. “Esoteric Church of Dagon” opens with whirlwind drums and a scything unison of bass and guitars, almost bordering on speed metal, and only gets better when you notice the attention to detail in Votsis’s amazing ride cymbal work. This piece glistens with the dark, melodic stride shared by so much Greek black metal.

Another reason the album works so beautifully is that Emmanuel’s production is immaculate. Everything is clear and precise, even when there are layers upon layers of instrumentation, but Vailas’s bass often sings out on its own with a weighted reediness, and Papadimitriou’s and Tsakiropoulus’s guitars move between glistening, stomping, chiming, screaming, and snarling as need be. Perhaps the true secret weapon, though, is the massive drum performance from Votsis. He has played in a huge number of bands, including stints with such heavy-hitters as Ravencult, Embrace of Thorns, Dephosphorus, Thou Art Lord, and Necromantia. On Storming the Walls, he maintains the intensity of those more extreme bands, but merges his playing with the more classicist tendencies of Triumpher, and each new listen to the album reveals even more detail and finesse in his astonishing performance.

For an album as thoroughly steeped in so many different aspects of ‘80s metal, Storming the Walls also sometimes feels both older and newer. In a peculiar way, the album frequently reminds me of the patient yet lethal architecture of Sad Wings of Destiny, but perhaps even more interesting is the way in which it lands in a similar headspace to Death’s Sound of Perseverance. One major element in that comparison is that Votsis’s drumming shares much in common with Richard Christy’s powerhouse performance (and sound) on Death’s final album, but it feels a little deeper than that, too. Both albums seem to share the mission of merging aspects of extreme metal and more traditional heavy metal, except that Schuldiner and co. were taking a death metal frame and moving towards trad, where Triumpher are painting epic traditional metal with subtle undertones of more extreme styles.

Around the album’s midpoint, “I Wake the Dragon” claws its way into an absolutely blazing midsection that gives way to a fiery guitar solo before winding its way back to the heavy stomp of the song’s opening. Not only are the guitar leads and solos fantastic throughout the album, but they are also written in a narrative style that suits each song. On “I Wake the Dragon,” the solo bursts in with its frantic wail right as the song describes an army throwing itself into bloody slaughter, while on “Divus de Mortuus,” the solo retraces the chords before spinning off into an arpeggiated shred that feels almost Luca Turilli-ish. Late-album standout “The Tomb” also sports a tremendous instrumental break and solo section kicking off around the 2:30 mark, which sees Papadimitriou and Tsakiropoulos sounding inspired by Denner and La Rocque circa King Diamond’s Abigail, with Votsis adding a Mikkey Dee-sized wallop.

Storming the Walls ends with the triumphant, uplifting closer “The Blazing Circle,” which adds a burnished organ to the pre-chorus before launching into an enthralling refrain of bronze-radiant choirs and wild-eyed defiance: “Riiiiiiide under the light of the morning star, / Stab with a blade in their hearts. / Blow, the winds of revenge – / the gods are favoring the brave.”

After sitting with Triumpher’s outstanding debut, I feel like I have an answer forming to the question, “Why do you like heavy metal?” Through the bracing steel of Storming the Walls, I realize that the reason I like heavy metal is that it fortifies me for victory. 

Triumpher offer tales of battle and heroism, Greek mythology and poetry, Lovecraft and demons and dragons. But victory? Victory can mean a lot of things. It can mean standing on a flame-ravaged battlefield, sword slickly glutted with the blood of your righteously vanquished foes. But it need not mean only bravado or belligerence. Victory can also mean shoveling your neighbor’s sidewalk. It can mean choosing to do the right thing instead of the easy thing, or it can mean being brave enough to ask for help. Victory is not simply reserved for grand, heroic ventures; victory lives in everyday kindnesses and the small mercies that sustain us through life’s many seasons. Heavy metal fortifies me – Triumpher’s Storming the Walls fortifies me – for these victories.

If you think it is important for me to retain my objectivity and avoid hyperbole, then let’s just pretend I am joking when I say that if you do not like Storming the Walls, it is possible that you do not like heavy metal. If ever you have loved heavy metal, love it here, love it well, love it now.

Posted by Dan Obstkrieg

Happily committed to the foolish pursuit of words about sounds. Not actually a dinosaur.

All Posts