When was the last time you felt powerful? I’m not talking about anything grandiose or world-historical; think of a time you opened the pickle jar on the first try, or a time when you did the small, quiet right thing. At a time when so many of the things in our lives feel out of our control, at the mercy of the whims and petty desires of sad, pitiful men in positions of nominal power – whether political, economic, or cultural – it’s helpful to locate the strength that each of us has. Even the smallest fortification of our spirit, the most seemingly innocuous feeling of agency, can buttress us with that valuable currency: hope. These are heavy, trying times, and friends, heavy metal is not going to fix the world’s brokenness. But like the late, great Studs Terkel wrote, hope dies last, and heavy metal can buoy us when we feel tiny and disempowered.
[From the back, a resounding cry:]
I promise, the rest of these words are about the frankly ripping debut album from Greece’s Dragon Skull, Chaos Fire Vengeance. Not only is Dragon Skull’s debut from Greece, but it absolutely sounds 100% Greek as balls, with an epic, walloping heavy metal style that often leans toward power metal. The production on Chaos Fire Vengeance is a streamlined, muscular sort of professional polish that you might find with a band like Primal Fear, with the rhythm guitars a rubbery punch, the lead guitar a gleaming tone, the drums a booming force, and the bass in its frequent spotlights a loose, prowling twang. Sitting atop it all is a gritty, lung-busting powerhouse performance from vocalist Ares, whose tone comes across a little bit like a slightly dirtier midpoint between Grand Magus’s JB Christofferson and Visigoth’s Jake Rogers.
Across these eight smartly compact songs, Dragon Skull moves seamlessly between more epic-leaning doom pacing and speedier crushers. “War Drums” is one of the best of the more epic numbers, rolling forward relentlessly like a siege engine with its restrained, stomping pace and powerful choral effects on the chorus. “Nampat” and “Dragon Riders,” by contrast, are exemplars of Dragon Skull’s more overtly power-leaning material. When “Nampat” first rushes out into its opening dual-guitar lead, its steel glints in the sun briefly like prime early 2000s Amon Amarth, and “Dragon Riders” has an even more effervescent opening bounce and a late-album bridge that allows George Voudouris’s bass to really shine.
The climactic closing tune “Blood and Souls” brings together all the elements of Dragon Skull’s strength into a lengthy piece that opens with some tasty flourishes from Teo Stamatiadis’s drums and features both particularly excellent riffing and solos from guitarists Chris Brintzikis and Panos Wallach and some tasteful backing synths/orchestration that lends an even greater Blind Guardian angle (already laid on heavily when the tune includes lyrics “On my quest to Tanelorn”…).
If you’ve read all these words, there’s close to a zero percent chance that you’re uncertain where you might stand on a proposition like Dragon Skull. Again, if we must recap, we’re talking: Greece. Dragon Skull. Swords and shields and blood and dragons. Epic heavy metal. Proudly, intentionally, extravagantly unsubtle music. You probably already know whether the idea of a ferocious, polished debut album with these waypoints (and further echoes of Battleroar, Ironsword, Triumpher, and on and on) gets your noodle in a twist. Listening to this music will not grant you external power, but it can be a tool to cultivate your own inner strength and muster the will to keep carrying the light into whatever darkness confronts you.
