Emerald Rage - High King Review

Power Metal at its best! I mean, 1980s true Power Metal at its best with few or none reflections of today’s subgenre. Emerald Rage do their name here because of this. Strangely, for some trendy genres this is a bad name, but not to Metal music. On the other hand, it’s quite the compliment.

As many of their peers, many references and influences can be linked to “High King.” First of them is from opening track “Into the Sky” whose first moments makes the fan remind of a great classic from a band that used to might but chose to be bigger to get small. As I know ny dear fan won’t know the name of the band if I don’t tell it I’ll easy things. The song is Metallica’s “Metal Militia” with the same drum pounding and attack and the killer guitars. Later on the song will developt what I think it’s a stapler of the band that is the guitar duo and their amazing guitar phrasing. The song slows down a little comparing to “Metal Militia” but the guitar phrasing is so catchy that the fan will soon forget the homage. Following track “Wrathful Eyes” shows another stapler from the band that is its juvenil enthusiasm in the form of music. I’l elaborate. “High King” is a high adrenalized and energetic album, however this enthusiasm surpasses the band musical ability. I mean, sometimes the fan will notice that something is missing in the tracks or something is not well put. That’s it. But no problem, lots of classic Metal albums have this feeling.

In general, it’s possible to find lots of other bands that “High King” makes us remember. My first impression when I heard the album for the first time is that the band could have a great influence of Viper, a band that I cited here a lot of times, but that isn’t really popular. I thought so because at first I thought Emerald Rage had the same explosive combination that Viper had which is a faster Iron Maiden with touches of Helloween. However, when I heard the band for the umpteenth time time I thought otherwise. The band has many other influences as Anthrax, Judas Priest, and others. It doesn’t mean they lack of personality, on the contrary, as I said before the band has lots of personality.

“High King” is an album for the fans of the high adrenalized Power Metal of the 1980s.

Emerald Rage “High King” was released on July 06th via Stormspell Records.

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