Ironsword (Prt) - Overlords of Chaos

A lot of the heavy metal that is coming out today can be considered as bands that miss the point of heavy metal. These bands have some catchy riffs every once in a while and those fist pounding choruses that one can enjoy, but kind make the listener get the feeling like Iron Maiden did it much better. However, in Kansas a band called Manilla Road evolved to a heavy metal band with tons of balls to the walls riffs which maintain the energy and fist pounding choruses of heavy metal, but riffs to blow you off your ass. Manilla Road made a few albums in this style (The Deluge, Open the Gates, Mystification, and Out of the Abyss), and the guys from Ironsword obviously eat this up because Overlords of Chaos takes the ideas from Manilla Road and expand upon them; it can be easy to think about Ironsword as just a Manilla Road clone, but they are so much more!

Overlords of Chaos is filled balls to the walls riffs from start to finish. The growth of songwriting and riffs from Ironsword’s previous two albums is phenomenal. When writing the songs this time around, Ironsword uses much better leads to enhance the riffing and the flow of the songs. During each song, a crushingly heavy metal riff comes out, but to make sure the song doesn’t get tedious the band throw in heart felt leads and emotive vocals to keep the listener entrenched in the album. All out aggression is the point of this album (with a few acoustic parts, but work perfectly in the album) with deep vocals that are reminiscent of Mark Shelton of Manilla Road; however, the use of Manilla Road style vocals, just makes it feel like the aggressive days of Manilla Road are continued into today’s metal; however, the band has loads of catchy fist pounding heavy metal choruses as well! Overlords of Chaos is filled with emotion from the entire band; it’s obvious that each band member puts their heart and soul into each riff, bass line, drum beat, and vocal lines. Emotion in this album just makes this album from a good heavy metal album to something great.

With a combination of great influences, superb songwriting, and emotion, this album can easily be described as a worthy album on its own or an expansion of the great works of Manilla Road!

Go to Shadow Kingdom Records and buy this heavy metal massacre!