You can’t always, and nor should you, judge a book by its cover. But you can, from time to time, accurately gauge the contents of an album from its cover art, particular when the cover art is a crudely drawn flame –breathing robot and the band are called Switchblade. Not that this is a bad thing. Signed to Metal Killer Records (motto: Live a metal life – die a metal death), Switchblade are the purest of pure heavy metal, distilling the sound of Judas Priest and Iron Maiden and letting fly on nine super-charged tracks that could come from pretty much any time period from the late seventies onwards. Such is the timeless appeal of heavy metal that many will find much to admire in this release and it certainly helps that their singer, Lior “Steinmetal” Stein sounds like a young Bruce Dickinson. Hailing from Israel, Switchblade have been active for some years, but ‘Heavy Weapons’ is their first album and it is, for the most part, a damn fine metal album.
With steel-plated riffs and semi-operatic vocals (think ‘children of the damned’), Switchblade take their commitment to heavy metal deadly seriously. The album leads off with the fast-paced titled track, as good an introduction to the group as you could wish for with its hard-edged riffs and passionate vocals, and then things kick up a notch on the fret-board bothering, percussive beast that is ‘Euphoria’. Federico “FedeRock” Taich more than simply knows his way around the guitar- some of his playing is out of the world with rich, fluid leads set against crisp taut riffs – and the band take full advantage of his prodigious skills, allowing plenty of space for solos. ‘Metalista’ has a classic riff and a foot-stomping rhythm that refuses to let go, the band kicking out the sort of hard-living, hard-dyin’ metal that makes you want to pump your fist in the air and then ‘lost lovers unite’ slows the pace, allowing Federico to exercise his classical guitar skills for a ballad that is, arguably, the weakest track on the album. Compared to the rampant enthusiasm found elsewhere, the slow guitars and atmospheric keyboards need a defter touch on the drums whilst the vocals simply overpower the guitar work as Steinmetal simply continues to utilise his voice at lung-bursting volume. It’s by no means a terrible song, but you can’t help that they’d spent more time on the dynamic of the song, toning down the more extrovert elements to allow the song to breathe and evolve naturally.
Things get back on track with the keyboard enhanced riffing of ‘the lost kingdom’ which sits somewhere between the Faith No More of Big Jim Martin and Priest. The result is a track with plenty of power as well as a good deal of atmospheric support from the keyboards A decent instrumental, the band keep the attention by varying the playing styles significantly and, by keeping it short and sweet, the band also do not overindulge, thus they avoid wearing out the song’s welcome. ‘Infernal paradise’ is a full-on metal assault that sees the members of the band giving their all discharging a series of of blazing metal riffs and whilst Steinmetal delivers his typically powerful vocals with aplomb. ‘Curse of the father, sins of the son’ is similarly over-amped, with the guitars surging with real vitality as Moshe “Moshpit” Sabach lays down yet another rock solid rhythmic foundation. ‘Into the unknown’ has a nice choppy riff and a ‘seventh son…’-era Maiden feel. The album ends with ‘Endless war’, a huge battle hymn with massed vocals in the chorus that will surely get the mosh pit singing and the sort of blood pumping riffs that make you lose your head and dance like a loon if you’re at all passionate about metal.
Overall ‘Heavy weapons’ is a huge amount of fun. It is not a perfect album, however. Steinmetal has a powerful and impressive voice but, like Bruce Dickinson in the early years of Maiden, he occasionally trades precision for power (if you watch the ‘live after death’ set you can hear Bruce doing the same thing) with the result that some of his more complex vocal manoeuvres lose their way. The band also operate far better when the pedal is to the metal than on the softer song, ‘lost lovers unite’, where they struggle to adopt the appropriate level of restraint to properly ground the song. However, these are minor gripes, and on the whole Switchblade have delivered an album that is powerful, passionate and liable to get most metalheads raising their horns more often than not. Like Maiden and Priest, Switchblade proudly fly the flag of heavy metal and, as their press statement says, they’re not trying to reinvent the wheel, rather they’re trying (and succeeding) to keep the wheel spinning. Such passion should be rewarded and there is no question that Switchblade are true defenders of the faith. ‘Heavy weapons’ is, in the final analysis, a love letter to the genre of metal and I for one can’t wait to see what they come up with on album number two. All hail Switchblade, long may they continue to worship at the altar of the riff.
