Kingdom Of The Knights

Gothic Knights are a US band who have a long history of lineup changes, label problems, and relentlessly mediocre albums, all of which has condemned them to perpetual also-ran status. But unlike a lot of other third-rate acts, they did produce one first-rate album. Despite the failure that has been the hallmark of their career, Kingdom Of The Knights is an absolute classic album of raw, unpolished True Heavy Metal.

Rather than the embarrassing derivativeness of much of their output, this album is like a distillation of everything good about classic metal: chugging riffs, soaring vocals, and wailing guitar leads. Brian Avatar only sang with them this once, and he blows all the other sad sacks they've had behind the mike right off the map with his high-octane performance. The songwriting here produces both songs that are merely good, like "War In The Sky", and songs that are fucking great, like "Keeper Of The Gate". All the tunes here rule to one degree or another, even the closing cover of "The Ripper" is pretty good, if not mold-breaking.

This is just a stomper of a metal album, with killer songs all around. Nobody is more surprised than me to find Gothic Knights' name on such a quality release. Sentinel Steel reissued this some years ago, but I think they're all gone, so this can be hard to find, but worth the effort.