Warthur
Whilst phrases like "lineup changes" and "new musical direction" might cause music fans to wince and fret for the future of their favourite bands, in the case of 3 Inches of Blood these changes actually seem to have done a world of good. Fire Up the Blades was, the band admit, the result of them listening to a whole lot of black metal, and whilst the group don't turn their backs on their essentially traditional metal/NWOBHM-influenced sound, they incorporate a number of ideas from black metal into their music and ramp up the speed and brutality of their music to create an intriguing hybrid. (Blackened NWOBHM?)
Lyrically speaking, the band are still the enthusiastic fantasy nerds we know and love; the changes are mainly in the music, particularly in the furiously loud and fast-paced drumming courtesy of Alexei Rodriguez and the way the band use Jason Hooper's screamed vocals. Though at first I didn't like it as much as the gloriously nostalgic Advance and Vanquish, now it's become my favourite 3 Inches of Blood album - most importantly, it shows the band being willing to grow and develop their sound beyond catering to mere nostalgia. Purists might turn their noses up at the band's willingness to incorporate appropriate ideas from extreme metal into their music, but I for one think the band showed a lot of smarts in choosing precisely which lessons they'd take from black metal and what sort of thing they would leave to the corpsepainted experts.