Band:	Heimdall
Album:	Hephaestus
Style:	Power metal
Release date:	August 2023

01. Hephaestus
02. Masquerade
03. King
04. The Runes
05. Till The End Of Time
06. Power
07. We Are One
08. Spellcaster
09. The Show Must Go On [Queen cover]

Greek mythology themed heavy/power metal might've had some misses, but an Italian band with the name of a Norse god might have more luck.

Other users have already pointed out the irony of the mish mash of origins for the band, band name, and album theme, and I'd also like to point how centering your album around a god that's pretty famous for his less than ideal appearance and physical disability (which made it even more ironic for him to be the one to marry Aphrodite, but there's a lot to that story I'm not gonna get into) and then making him that inhumanely ripped and imposing in the cover art might be even weirder. Well, I'm not even really sure if Hephaestus is even a concept album around the mythological figure, since other than the opening title track, the rest of the tracks don't indicate any link beyond just being a collection of power metal tunes, contrasting with their previous album, 2013's Aeneid, which felt a bit more conceptual as a whole.

So why am I so uncharacteristically choosing to cover a power metal album, and also one by a band that I was not familiar with before, and one that doesn't have anything especially specific about them? I can't exactly give a full and clear answer other than me wanting to step out of my comfort zone a bit instead of trying to suggest power or heavy albums that I like to other people. I'm no stranger to reviewing power metal albums, and it's also not the first cover art I've seen this month that looked like video game art, so it ain't just that. As much I'm afraid I'm still too much outside of my comfort zone to be very specific about what makes a power metal album the way it is, I was still pretty compelled by Heimdall.

Despite not having heard of the band (and judging by their band name one could expect any combination of folk and black metal, but this is pretty pure heavy power), I was surprised to find that the band goes all the way back to the late 90s, with a first album in 1998 and then a pretty steady pace until 2004's Hard As Iron, an album that has a pretty positive review here, but then the band has quite grinded their pace to a halt, with only two albums since, including this one. Despite a few lineup changes since, probably the most significant thing is that vocalist Gandolfo Ferro, who made his debut with the band on Aeneid is still present, and a lot of this album's impact comes down to his voluminous vocals.

Even with Heimdall being an Italian power metal band, they seem to take some more influence from traditional heavy metal rather than the very melodramatic flower metal of the one Italian power metal band that everyone is thinking of (and their dozen offshoots). The riffing is pretty muscular at many points, and even though the moments that feel closer to heavy than to power are few, and the band can delve into neoclassical inspired guitar solos, they don't lose a sense of force in favor of melody. The riffing and the vocals take a lot of the credit here in grounding the music from sounding too melodramatic, even the more ballad-like moments that are complete with pianos and softer vocals. Sure, the band might save a lot of the cheese factor for the closing Queen cover, but by that point the listener would already be accustomed to moderately higher amounts of cheesy power metal.

I doubt Hephaestus will make Heimdall the household they could've been without the huge gaps between releases, but it does its job of being a fine power metal album and making me glad that even with the huge gaps, the band is still here.