Highlighting the first of many positives right away, I’m glad to see that the title of Orden Ogan’s previous album “Final Days” wasn’t a prediction about their own future, because the band have returned bright eyed and spiky tailed in their new home on Reigning Phoenix Music, full of determination and brimming with intent right from the off. There’s no messing around with symphonic intros this time, as they explode immediately into opener ‘Kings Of The Underworld’, which leaps off at a hectic pace, setting the scene for the rest of the album with four minutes of galloping fury, instantly showcasing their trademark sound.
Orden Ogan’s personal brand of classy, polished, energetic Power Metal has been honed over many enthralling full-length albums, with the band’s heaviness and intensity reaching a peak on their last few. This album wastes no time in continuing and reaffirming it. The high quality of the band’s songwriting was never in particular doubt, but this time they’ve also chosen to work with an additional co-songwriter (a long-term, die-hard fan from Uruguay), which has breathed further energy into the band, as well as reminding them what was so great about their earlier albums. So this album naturally gives plenty of nods to how they have been throughout their impressive twenty-year career so far, but all delivered in their superbly heavy current guise. The production is excellent and the emphatic way the songs are delivered leaves the listener in no doubt as to their commitment.
The drums and bass are as powerful and thunderous as ever. The guitars dazzle and Seeb’s excellent voice present the vocal lines and melodies perfectly. It’s all as you would hope for. There’s always a subtle difference between each Orden Ogan album, but this time it’s actually the way you can hear some of their previous guises just peeking through at times, in both the music and the lyrics, which also revisit past themes. This album is far from a retrospective, it’s ten songs (all around 4 minutes long apart from a spoken passage and an epic closer) that represent a group using their new label as a point to slightly reset, realise all the great qualities they’ve always possessed, and rediscover themselves. So many of this band’s best qualities are on display here, and it’s actually quite exciting to hear that they seem to have found themselves…within themselves, rather than striving for something that was in danger of diluting what made them such a great band in the first place. It ends up actually being Orden Ogan at their comprehensive best.
(9/10 Andy Barker)
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