Metal Inquisitor - Ultima Ratio Regis

This guy looks like Sauron going for an evening run. Wow, I wonder how many album covers Tolkien single-handedly inspired...Fans of classic NWOBHM-style tunes may already know of Metal Inquisitor and their commitment to that sound. And with their fourth studio release, Ultima Ratio Regis, that commitment rocks on with tunes that pay glorious homage to the heyday of such legendary acts as Judas Priest, Iron Maiden and Saxon.

Something that's both a blessing and a curse for this German band is how well they do what they do. If you try to sound like a classic NWOBHM band and stink at it, you end up being laughed at or, worse, ignored. But ironically, if you do it as well as these cats do, you face the possibility of being ignored as well; lost in the shuffle as if you were one of those countless bands from "back in the day". But there's real talent here, as you can't ignore the skill it takes to define your target and hit it with such pinpoint accuracy. It would be much easier to claim your influences by the aforementioned legends and add the usual modern fretboard wankery or genre-bending twist to it that so many bands do now as a given, losing the purity of the source material.

Ultima Ratio Regis (Latin for "the king's final argument", which used to be inscribed on Spanish cannons) succeeds by the band knowing precisely where it wanted to go and refusing to deviate for the sake of some imagined obligation to innovation for innovation's sake. And I'm happy to give a hearty horns up to that. Rock on, motherfuckers.

The Bottom Line: Metal Inquisitor eschews today's trends of mixing genres and the heresy of digital studio wizardy, instead opting to walk the path of the metal gods before them. So what do we call this, The New Wave of The New Wave of British Heavy Metal? Fair enough, just keep playing!

Tracks To Play While Patching The Holes In Your [Vintage] Denim Jacket: All of them

- Genghis really wants to go back in time to the classic concerts of his youth...