Well, I have been waiting a long time for this. I reviewed Battle Ram's self-titled demo back in like 2005, and I still treasure it. That demo showed off a rough but powerful band with roots in the more pugilistic end of the Italian True Metal pool. The intervening years we all waited, and waited, and waited for the band to produce a proper album, and I was not sure they ever would. But at last, we get the debut, which is so dead-on they could have well recorded it in 2006 and just sat on it until now.
The band has a new singer, but he sounds a lot like a better version of their old one, and otherwise the lineup has stayed pretty stable, and what they dish up is a slew of rock-solid True Metal songs that are like pure headbang heroin for fans of the style. Chugging riffs, wailing vocals, a recording job that is neither too rough nor too clean, this is just full of good shit. This does not hit the highs of a band like Battleroar, but for pummeling back-to-basics metal, this is a gem to be savored. It was a long wait, but this was worth it.
