Black Majesty - In Your Honor

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I’m not sure if I would classify BLACK MAJESTY as Power Metal. Sure, they have a lot of influences from that genre but to me this is much more just Heavy Metal. Yes, more Power than NWOBHM, that’s clear but BLACK MAJESTY are absolutely more than just Power Metal. But I think this is quite typical for an Aussie band, they have a touch of the Swedish heavier Power alá NOCTURNAL RITES, the really catchy chorus lines in the likes of GAMMA RAY or FREEDOM CALL and the US version that is darker and a little more progressive than the European standard. LORD, ILIUM and DUNGEON are other good example of a band of the same kind though Lord is a little heavier than BLACK MAJESTY but the ingredients in the music is the same, just different dozes of the influences. Maybe there’s a little too much of the German quite easy kind of Power Metal on this album for my taste.

There are such songs on this record, album opener “Far Beyond” is a fast and quite plain Power Metal track. Luckily the rest of the album doesn’t follow that one. I absolutely prefer the darker and heavier songs on this one. Songs like “Millenium” and “Break These Chains” are more in my taste and in the latter one there an odd little feature. Sometimes just small details do a lot, in “God Of War”, John “Gio” Cavaliere sounds like he’s clearing his throat after a thick gob at the start of the bridge, at “Circling its prey with talons poised”. In one way it’s a little disturbing because I really wouldn’t want to be the microphone if he made reality of his action and decided to dispose the disgusting mucus. On the other hand, things like that add a lot of personality and make everything more interesting, more real. That’s missing from so many bands and even if BLACK MAJESTY are quite basic (still very good though) Heavy/Power Metal a little thing like that placed them outside the “safe-box”. The chorus line in “Break These Chains” is embarrassingly close to the old EARTH, WIND & FIRE hit “Fantasy”.

In the total picture “For Your Honor” is a very nice album, not extraordinary but it’s very much alive and vibrant. BLACK MAJESTY has the things I lack in many of the newer Power Metal bands, they sounds like a band, it’s real and the record isn’t overproduced. Roland Grapow (MASTERPLAN, ex-HELLOWEEN) has done a good job producing the album. Not too much and not too corrected and compressed but still enough depth and power to keep it heavy. All in all this is a very nice package, a to the music very suitable cover, 9 cool Power/heavy tracks and if you get the European digi-pack version of the album there’s two bonus tracks as well.