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Frontiers [Release date: 16.09.22]
On this, their 11th studio album, House Of Lords deliver aggressive, in your face melodic rock. The music comes out of its corner swinging, ready for the fight.
James Christian now has Mark (Touch, Drive She Said) Mangold on keyboards. Quite a coup. Two survivors in a genre that’s suffered a cultural and critical pummelling over the last few decades.
Add to that, guitarist Jimi Bell and drummer, BJ Zampa, both of whom have been with the band since 2005 and you have a rock solid, bolted to the floor Melodic Hard Rock band.
From track to track, the band run through a few variations of dramatic, high density music. Nods to the past, bows to the present. The fast and furious title track ‘Saints And Sinners’, darkly hued, and the full blown, high harmony, grown up arena rock of ‘Take It All’ are the kind of impassioned songs that demand the big, bold production skilfully provided by Mangold and Christian.
Much of the material is embellished with progrock and symphonic rock touches, and an occasional taste of power metal, showing an astute awareness of what’s bubbling below the surface of general public perception.
The complex, exciting ‘Mistress Of The Dark’, opened and fuelled up by Bell’s riffs and Mangold’s bubbling keys, is arguably the album’s standout track. Not least because Christian invests so much emotion in a roaringly empowered vocal performance. And once again, Mangold shows a a few flourishes of production genius here and there, most notably a majestic keyboard solo, surrounded by Zampa’s thundering rhythms and the band’s symphonic harmonies.
Even when laying down the heaviest of riffs, the music is light on its feet. Just the very fact the band has toughened up on the delivery is as much of a risk we expected them to take. ***1/2
Review by Brian McGowan
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