Dying Victims Productions, black vinyl, insert, poster, sticker, post card, download code, Hailing from Helsinki, Finland’s ANGEL SWORD formed in 2010 with the intent to play old-school heavy metal. And they get right to it with the too-perfectly titled demo Where We Are Going You Cannot Come demo later that year. Two EPs followed – 2013’s Ripping the Heavens and 2015’s The Midwinter Tapes – before their decisive debut album, Rebels Beyond the Pale, in 2016. Another perfectly titled recording, ANGEL SWORD’s first full-length was a fresh breath of old air, finding some elusive (and deceptively laidback yet rough) landscape of late ‘70s heavy metal, subsequent NWOBHM, and adjacent early US power metal. Three years later followed the tighter and slightly more aggressive Neon City, expanding the band’s still-‘80s-bound gaze through a charmingly rustic retro-futurist lens. During all these years, ANGEL SWORD have opened for Manilla Road, Blitzkrieg, and Satan as well as playing such festivals as Metal Assault, Metalheadz Open Air, Storm Crusher warmup, and Up the Hammers warm-up. Oh, and along the way, Darkthrone’s Fenriz thoroughly championed the band! "Our goal in this age of soulless, overproduced modern metal is to re-summon the metal gods of old with a skull-crushing, vomit-inducing dose of rough-edged heavy metal,” state ANGEL SWORD, and that’s exactly what they do with World Fighter! It’d be easy to simply say that their third album is a fairly even balance between the first two albums and…well, it’s kinda the truth! Sporting yet another amazing cover artwork, World Fighter brings the bathos and bravado right from its opening seconds, ANGEL SWORD sounding like true world fighters as they chug forward to their battle hymns. From there, nuance and shade – or, rather, just MOOD – become the watchwords as the quartet keep the thrust mostly mid-tempo, allowing their dark melodicism to fully take flight. And, while ANGEL SWORD never seem like they’re in any hurry, the eight tracks of World Fighter are actually the band’s most uptempo work yet; it’s just that they’re exuding such poise now that that pace feels deceptively relaxed, that big & brassy pulse coasting with coolness and heaviness. Put another way, the album’s almost-uniformly balls-to-the-wall gait summons an effervescent energy – and maximum attitude. Truly, ANGEL SWORD are nothing if not engaging in their rough ‘n’ tumble, raise-the-swords charisma, becoming those very blue-collar ruffians you can really believe in. Coupled with a smoother, somewhat-shimmering style of production that still allows their intrinsic grit to “shine” through, World Fighter goes against all odds to become ANGEL SWORD’s crowning achievement to date. All weekend warriors, enter their Church of Rock post-haste!
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