aaamusic | On 22, Apr 2012

Staking their claim as survivors of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal in a similar way to Anvil being Canada’s great Thrash survivors, Mansfield Metalers Savage are a marginally more successful version of the Canadian quartet that charmed the world with their self-titled documentary. Pedalling largely the same brand of British Heavy Metal harnessed by the raw energy of Punk as the, to put it softly, more successful likes of Iron Maiden, Def Leppard and Diamond Head did, Sons of Malice, only Savage’s sixth album in just under 30 years (seriously, this is a band who have twice taken longer than a decade to make an album, to put this in context, it took The Beatles around seven years to release all twelve of their studio albums) sees them stick to their formula in the stickiest manner since Sticky the Stick Insect got stuck on a sticky bun, if you know where I got that from then you are most definitely invited to my birthday party.
Pointless reference jokes aside, there is not much to rave about here, the musicianship is as good as you’d expect for a band who’ve spent over 30 years playing one of the most needlessly technical genres around, all the songs are pretty much par for the course when it comes to it, the fast songs like The Rage Within (yup, that’s its name)and Now are made to race about like a bull in a china shop and the slower songs like Black N Blue, the title track and, funnily enough, the rest of the album, are made to swagger around like the Bull that bought the chain of china shops. Whether they actually do is another question entirely, there are precious few genuinely fast moments on the record, the aforementioned two tracks being the only ones on it, the rest of it swaggers the first time you hear it but very soon after degenerates into just plodding along miserably when one realizes that they just didn’t have any other ideas. That’s not to say that the two fast numbers are much better, they just raise the pulse slightly, which is desperately needed on this tranquilizer of an album.
In short, this record isn’t atrocious, it’s too dull to be awe-inspiringly bad, it’s also not (all that) embarrassing, unlike another comeback album from another past it British eighties metal band called Wolfsbane, although both frontmen have equally terrible voices. It’s just so deathly dull that the only thing you’ll remark upon while listening to it is how many more constructive things you could be doing with your time instead. So, Savage then, better than Wolfsbane, but then, syphilis is better than Wolfsbane, so make of that what you will.

★★★★★

Will Howard