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(Review From UK)
THUNDER RIDER (Can) - "Tales of darkness & light II" CD
For once in my life I'm going to recommend a CD issue rather than the vinyl, but why you may ask, well basically the CD version of this incredible second album holds the entire musical picture...
But, where to start, well quite simply late last year that bastard Sven sent me a copy of THUNDER RIDER's second LP on vinyl, and I thought it was killer, but it did not hit me how killer until the bands JOHN BLACKWING forwarded me a CD version of the album, and I was totally blown away by the metal therein.... astounding stuff to be sure. Make no mistake; this is not your run of the mill release, and definitely NOT for the spineless fools who worship "Euro happy metal". Indeed, the 15 tracks on offer present the listener with PURE EPIC CULT METAL of the highest calibre forged in fire and tempered with passion and conviction!!!
Vocalist/Guitar player JOHN BLACKWING, and his brothers in arms PAT HAMMER on Drums, BRUCE CORIAN on lead guitar and various other session players in my honest opinion made an album to match MANILLA ROAD at their zenith. And
MANILLA ROAD is indeed the best reference point I could give you for this stunning work. At times I think I'm listening to an undiscovered MANILLA
ROAD LP, but I say this only as a reference, for THUNDER RIDER are their own band for sure...playing metal like this they could not be anything else.
The listener is assaulted by epic anthem after epic anthem, "THY KINGDOM
COME", "DEATH ANGEL", "HEAVY METAL WIZZARD" etc, no moment of this recording could be considered filler material. As I was saying earlier, the CD version gives the whole musical picture, and as the CD plays the themes themselves for each song take on a whole new life of their own with each repeated listen. You begin to appreciate the depth of the album
And I cannot praise this enough in terms of composition, production and packaging. Indeed the packaging is superb for a CD, with each song having its own lyric page and individual piece of artwork. Awesome...
Brothers and sisters, I implore everyone to check out this album.
Canada's
THUNDER RIDER have given us an album to be held up there with CIRITH UNGOL, WARLORD, ELIXIR, MANILLA ROAD and CANDLEMASS...