IRON FIRE — Voyage of the Damned (review)

IRON FIRE — Voyage of the Damned album cover

Album · 2012 · Power Metal

4/5 · 2012-08-14
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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))