Another day, another young band jumping into the shoes of classic metal or in this case speed induced metal with some surprising old school glam twists and turns included along the way. That you’ll read about later, but for now the release information states this will be a vinyl effort on High Roller (not sure if there will be a CD version to be honest) and another label is releasing this on MC/Tape. Looking at the press photos from the band, I expect to hear a certain style. However, the more melodic vocals on some tracks remind me of Stephen Percy from Ratt or Steve Whiteman from Kix, well that’s just me isn’t it, or is it? It’s a complete U-turn to my original image based assumption. ‘Give it to Me’ starts and ends with that American Sunset strip sound, but the gem is a dash of speed metal for the second solo and centre section. Traditional and Speed Metal is where the majority of these songs lay and I do like the inclusion of total 80’s worship on this EP reminding me of a time when there was only a few sub genres compared to the vast array of descriptions we now live with.
For a more balls out metal attack spin a track like the opener ‘Canadian Steel’ which does have a touch of Exciter mixed with the sounds many US power metal bands from the 80’s but when Stallion’s “full speed or no speed” is included as a lyric, you are in fantastic company if not in a totally unique place. These two tracks mentioned previously appeared on their demo earlier this year and to be fair the vocal is much more what you would expect from a Speed metal band on ‘Canadian Steel’ in reverse of the references I made earlier.
So moving onto the new tracks, ‘The Right One’ is speed metal and traditional metal sounding like the muscular metal of fellow countrymen Accept and Living Death, which is a big plus point for this release. Then you come to ‘Shadow Run’ which is the most pure speed metal assault of the release and this has the required frantic palm mutes which results in pure delight, similar to what Ranger are doing of late in certain places I might also add.
These German’s also include a NWOBHM influence by covering the Rock Goddess track ‘Heavy Metal Rock ‘n’ Roll’ which brings me to conclude that Stallion, whilst they may have all the markers ticked in response to the current “scene” but they have the balls and the music to match. Whilst this EP does remind me of a lot of older stuff I listened to a long time ago in my early teens, I do feel this matches the quality control standard to enable a younger generation to give a sense of what it was all about. It doesn’t have an ounce of originality about, but I think that’s just perfect for what ‘Mounting the World’ is, which is a metal message of adrenaline and excitement.
(8/10 Paul Maddison)
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