Kev Rowland
Protector were originally a German thrash band who released some albums at the end of the Eighties and the beginning of the Nineties, but by 1995 none of the original members were left and they eventually dissolved. Singer Martin Missy left the band in 1994 and soon after moved to Sweden, and then in 2005 the idea was mooted of Martin fronting a Protector covers band, and so Martin Missy & The Protectors was formed. Eventually the idea came around about them recording some new songs, but Martin wanted the original band members to agree to this before using the name Protector on the album, and now here we are. Martin says, “The new record will have its own sound. We've tried to keep it old school, to keep the raw feeling of the songs… We wanted an 80’s thrash metal sound, and I hope we have succeeded with that.”
Well, they’ve succeeded with both the songs and the production. This is raw, and often feels more like demo material than an album recorded in 2013. It’s all well and good saying that you want to be authentic, but why settle for something where the bass and bottom end is non-existent while the drum sound is even worse? The comment is made by Martin that the reason that they didn’t become one of the Teutonic Big 4, is because they were slightly later than Kreator etc, but maybe it’s because they weren’t really good enough. This isn’t an awful album by any means, but there just isn’t enough here to lift it out of the ordinary and comes across as yet another thrash band with little in the way of ideas or promise.