Satan - Cruel Magic (2018)

Maiden thrives off its live legacy, while releasing overblown, overlong albums whose qualities are distilled and desperately in need of an editor, someone to tell them 'no' once in awhile. Judas Priest is on an upswing, granted, but only by emulating their 1990 breakout Painkiller. Saxon is rock solid, and have always been other than a handful of albums in the 80s and 90s. Tank is a clusterfuck turned tragedy. Grim Reaper, we lost you bro, and that sucks. Diamond Head is trying. Angel Witch is succeeding. Raven has kicked ass on the last two albums with the new drummer injecting some real power and contemporary extremity to the Gallagher brothers' estimable talents. But they're the only one that can even come close to the win streak that Satan has embarked on ever since their 2011 formation, and that's quite a compliment, because Brian Ross and company have a skill-set that leaves almost all of their peers from the 80s completely in the dust.

They might not have arena tours paying them hundreds of thousands per night, or VHS-1 documentaries galore; in fact they don't get attention commensurate to the amount of talent and effort they put into every recording. But Satan is the best NWOBHM band of the 21st century, and though it might be hard to pick amongst four such awesome new albums, one of those almost unparalleled runs in their sub-genre, Cruel Magic is my favorite Satan album. The masterpiece that has always been waiting beneath the wig of their demonic, grim reaping barrister mascot. This 10 tracks and 50 minutes of content compacts together all of the strengths of the band's career into some of their most intense, impressive, and immediately memorable material, and it represents the summit of a job done right, a reunion era that offers no fucks given for simply rollicking in nostalgia, laying down on their laurels. This is a record that punches as much forward as it punches back, and I don't mean through the use of electronics or cybertechnology, but by proving that their brand of musically-intensive, melodic heavy metal has so much more to offer than those who have given up on it as some relic of the past.

This one sunk its horns into me with the thundering "Into the Mouth of Eternity" and just never let me off the hooks. It's not always as frenzied as some of their other material, it actually keeps pretty tight reins on itself, and offers a good versatility of tempo and riff structure, but there's hardly a single note throughout this that ever felt misplaced. From the winding, blue-collar street grooves of the title track, to the eerie, mystical melodies of "Ophidian", this is an adventure cast in that organic, warm mix that the band has clung to throughout this new era. All instruments are absolutely clear, with rhythm guitars that feel punchy but never overdriven, bass lines that plod along with atmosphere and finesse of their own, and some very genuine drumming that feels like you're in the room with it. The leads are brilliant without being saturated in too many effects, they can create multiple dimensions just by the excellence of the note patterns, and Brian Ross has a great performance here which is often showing some more theatric elements as in "My Prophetic Soul". Italian producer Dario Mollo deserves a ton of credit for how well he framed the band's style on these first three reunion albums, an unsung hero of the band.

Every song is so good that you would never find me skipping any on a playthrough, but this is also one of the rare cases where a single/video is my favorite, "The Doomsday Clock", which has some of the most amazing, endless streams of riffs I've ever heard, drawing a lot from their Pariah years when they dazzled with tunes like "Puppet Regime". This is that busy, but fronted with those brief, beautiful acoustics, and those the classical guitar influence threaded through the faster hooks. Brian's vocal arrangements are absolutely bananas, with a little operatic counterpoint. Even the lyrics are great, here and elsewhere through Cruel Magic; they show some effort rather than dabbling in dumb metal stereotypes, and though I wouldn't call them poetic necessarily, they posit sensible and serious prose that can match the gravity and impressiveness of the musicianship. And when this tune transitions into the raging speed-metal piracy of "Legions Hellbound"...I'm a straight man, people, but goddamn do I whistle and catcall like a construction worker stereotype when this album struts on by.

Verdict: Epic Win [9.75/10]

https://www.satanmusic.com/