Metal
AFM Records
Release Date – September 13th 2024
Review By Smudge Smith
Victory are one of those bands that kinda get overlooked. They’ve been around in one guise or another since 1985 and this is their 14th album by my reckoning. They’ve had some solid performers through their ranks, but the one constant has been the riff machine himself Herman Frank. With this record they have carried on the stunning work from 2021’s ‘Gods Of Tomorrow’ – if you haven’t heard it get yourself a copy pronto because like this it’s red hot.
It’s a big grinding riff that kicks off ‘Tonight We Rock’ (yeah, we do!) that settles into a tasty groove that’s sure to get your head nodding and pumping your fist before the mid paced hard rock of ‘American Girl’ brings a tasty throbbing bassline from Malte Fredrik Burkert. This is perfect for radio and one of those dad driving compilations then we get ‘Count On Me’ which changes gears and has some blinding riffage and fills from Frank and Mike Pesin. ‘Surrender My Heart’ gets heavy on a superb chugger that has a mean breakdown on the chorus where singer Gianni Pontillo sounds like the sadly departed Steve Lee from Gotthard. It’s hard and heavy but oh so melodic.
Shades of the east appear on ‘Unbelievable World’ along with another dose of chug for good measure before we get another bouncy bassline on ‘Moonlit Sky’ which takes us right into Accept territory thank you very much. ‘Falling’ gets a bit darker and meaner, then we go hell for leather on the punchy ‘Money’. ‘Reason To Love’ eases back for a heavy rock ballad before we get a re-working of ‘Virtual Sin’ which was the title track of the only Poison Sun album from 2010 which had Herman’s missus Martina singing and it’s another you should seek out because it’s a scorcher too.
Herman Frank has a real knack of writing catchy heavy melodic metal songs. The riffs are big and expensive, and the solos are perfectly matched for the song. I don’t know who comes up with the vocal melodies, but they are world class. A band is the sum of its parts and here we have a true band with everybody working for the song. If you like well written expertly played great sounding, Dennis Ward mastered this beast, hard rock/metal then look no further you really won’t be disappointed.
Track List –
1 – Tonight We Rock
2 – American Girl
3 – Count On Me
4 – Surrender My Heart
5 – Unbelievable World
6 – Moonlit Sky
7 – Falling
8 – Money
9 – Reason To Love
10 – Virtual Sin
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