Warthur Voyage of the Damned is a solid album by Danish power metal veterans Iron Fire. Seven albums into their career, any band which hasn't burned out has typically either refined their approach to a fine art or just resorted to phoning it in; curiously, Iron Fire seem to have done both, since what they've produced here is a decent rendition of their particular power metal formula with the occasional symphonic ambition but ends up feeling totally disposable due to how generic it is. It's a simple offering of the sort which lots of bands dabble in, but Iron Fire pull it off with a bit more consistency at least the average power metal act - plus I have to give them points for including a Warhammer 40,000-inspired bonus track in the form of Warmaster of Chaos.

adg211288 Voyage of the Damned is the seventh album by Danish power metal act Iron Fire. The album was released in 2012. I’m going to confess straight up that while I’m not that familiar with the band to fully judge them what I have heard from them in the past has seemed listenable music, but nothing really remarkable to write home about. They’ve always seemed to tackle predictable themes in a predictable power metal way and have never stood out from the crowd for me.

Voyage of the Damned goes some way to change that, lyrically taking their listeners for a trip into space, and Iron Fire’s brand of power metal on the album additionally draws on traditional metal with symphonic and extreme metal influences, sometimes with very slight progressive leanings. Despite this Voyage of the Damned still has the unmistakable sound of European styled power metal, but Iron Fire attempts to further expand their sound through most notably use the growled vocals to go with Martin Steene’s clean singing voice. Steene is quite easily the best thing Iron Fire has ever had going for them, being a very good singer who doesn’t quite fit the whole typical power metal sound they’ve had going for them in the past. To be honest with a voice like that the growling isn’t really needed, but fortunately for Iron Fire the growls do mostly work in context of Voyage of the Damned, but this seems to be a trap that many power metal bands (and artists of other styles that don’t feature growls as a rule) are falling into. I can’t say I approve of band’s giving growling time of day when they don’t play a genre that demands it, like death metal, and especially when the singer is of high calibre. In this album’s case, there is death metal growling which works, but also some that sound closer to metalcore, which don’t so much.

What makes Voyage of the Damned noteworthy for me though is anything that previous made me think of Iron Fire as just another generic power metal act seems to have been sucked into a black hole, and although I don’t find myself with as high a regard for the album as I maybe could, I find myself nodding with approval all the same at the true power behind their riffs, the excellent and tasteful use of keyboards, which are anything but typical power metal cheese and of course Steene’s excellent vocals. Compositionally it is also pretty solid stuff. Iron Fire has really moved up in the world with this album. I could do without the moments of balladry parts, because the band shows their clear strengths to be in that classic Euro power metal sound and the first proper track after the intro, Enter Oblivion OJ-666, is no better example of Iron Fire being exceptional.

Although I can’t really consider it for the top tiers of ratings Iron Fire has left me impressed with Voyage of the Damned and pleasantly surprised. They really honed their craft and if they could just continue down this path they started to follow with this album then I think that they’ll be producing some of the best power metal going. Voyage of the Damned certainly has enough killer tracks like Enter Oblivion OJ-666, Taken, Ten Years in Space and Dreams Of The Dead Moon to suggest just that. Recommended album definitely.

8.1/10

(Originally written for Heavy Metal Haven (http://metaltube.freeforums.org))

Time Signature Realm of metalness...

Genre: power metal

European power metal has had the somewhat unfortunate reputation of being cheesy and poppy-happy, but that seems to be changing now with the emergence of European power metal acts that draw on heavier types of metal. One of these bands is the Copenhagen-based band Iron Fire (well, these guys are actually power metal veterans with several demos and albums under their belt), who, with "Voyage of the Damned", remind us that of the "power" that the term "power metal" includes.

The genre framework is unambiguously that of the aesthetics of power metal the big, epic overall sound of the album and the use of huge melodic choruses as well as the larger than life sci-fi-based subject matter of the lyrics. And, yes, there are keyboards and ballads on this album (just check the epic ballad 'The Final Odyssey' or the massively epic and symphonic title track). And these power metal elements themselves are not a problem at all. The problem to me is the way that many European power metal bands have cheesed up the genre. Fortunately, this is not something to worry about here, because there are hardly any cheesy moments on the album. Rather than being smearing in slushy cheese, the central power metal elements are neatly wrapped in thrashy guitars, groovy riffs, aggressive drums, occasional proggy shifts and odd time signatures, heavy doom-ladden passages and harsh growls and screams to supplement the already impressive – and expressive – clean vocals.

Iron Fire's brand of modern power metal, as presented on this release, not is not just the result of great songwriting but also top notch musicianship. These guys know what they are doing, and the overall performance is impeccable – from the guitar solos over the drum beats to the vocals. Drawing on genres such as melodeath, death metal, thrash metal and doom metal, Iron Fire have managed to create truly epic power metal, but, rather than going totally cheesy, they have manged to generate a dark and haunting feel – very fitting, considering that the darkness of outer space is a central theme of the album.

"Voyage of the Damned" is a slab of solid, dark and epic power metal. Totally free of Euro-power metal silliness, it is recommended to those who like their metal epic and powerful, but free from cheese.

(review originally posted at seaoftranquility)