When Ave Noctum’s dark overlord sent me this latest album by Castle to review I went into a bit of a panic. Checking the prior albums by the band I owned I found I had nothing since their rather excellent 2018 offering ‘Deal Thy Fate’, and I was worried I’d missed a couple of releases that I needed to catch up on. Fortunately for me, and more unfortunately for those who love their metal, there had indeed been a six year hiatus. However, this passage of time has not seen the band shuffle back timidly into the public eye, rather they swagger triumphantly forward presenting an album laden with power and confidence.
‘Queen of Death’ strides forward at the start, Liz Blackwell and Mat Davis sharing vocals over fist in your face riffs and pounding rhythms that hearken back to the early days of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, combining the musicianship and mysticism of early Diamond Head with their own Doom influences. For those who want to give their neck a thorough thrashing the band follows up with the evil attack of ‘Nosferatu Nights’ the aforementioned Mr Davis concentrating on his considerable shredding ability. Fortunately for the trapezii of the listeners the band slow things down with ‘Deja Voodoo’, an occult rock number that will appeal to followers of Jinx Dawson and Johanna Sadonis with its melange of mesmerising vocals and proto-metal beats.
After this opening trio it would be easy to imagine a lesser act running out of steam or allowing the quality to taper off, but with ‘Evil Remains’ that is not the case, the title track being a solid slice of Sabbath worshipping metal, with the addition of tripped out psychedelic notes to help give the track its own identity, follow up ‘Black Spell’ being a throbbing helping of hard rock, speeding along with the power of a redlining motorbike roaring down the motorway in search of adventure; I don’t know what kind of bass rig Liz Blackwell plays, but on this number I could believe she’d borrowed one of Lemmy’s Rickenbastards to bring the thunder, a sensibility that bleed through into the slower yet no less heavy crawl of ‘100 Eyes.’ The album is rounded off by ‘She’ a rocker that at points invites the listener to variously punch the air with their leather and stud clad fists then raise a lighter aloft, followed by the dark and almost Gothic tinged ‘Cold Grave’, a track that will have variously the devotees of Saint Vitus or Sisters of Mercy claiming it as their own, the heavy riffs drawing in the former, and the more ethereal guitar solo and brooding vocals the latter, and you know what, neither clan would be wrong.
Having been listening to a hell of a lot of Prog recently, I was amazed at just how quickly the eight tracks of ‘Evil Remains’ flew past in just 38 minutes, demanding that the replay button was pressed immediately and repeatedly, a sure sign of quality. Any one of these tracks would be a credit to Castle’s live set; I can only hope that one day the road brings them to the UK, as a perusal of their website only reminded me that after the shit-show of Brexit an “EU Tour” no longer includes these isles.
(8.5/10 Spenny)
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