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BURNING SUN
Wake Of Ashes

Stormspell (2023)
Rating: 6/10

Being the work of Hungarian duo Zoltàn Papi and Pancho Ireland, Burning Sun is a fantasy-driven metal act embarking on its debut full-length journey.

Firstly, let’s talk about the elephant in the room, the drum machine. Now, unless you’re a grotty black-death band who lives in the woods or Godflesh, drum programming rarely works, especially when you’re setting up as power metal outfit. So, however bombastic you want to be that awful drumming should have prompted you to find a real drummer before releasing this outing. It’s such a huge flaw here, which is a shame because other than that glaring issue everything is decent. The riffs are aplenty, the guys create some truly speedy and energetic encounters and vocally Pancho does an admirable job, even if on occasion he seems to be reaching just too far. What we don’t need is a mechanical backdrop that just grates.

Anyway, with that atrocity aside, Wake Of Ashes remains a potent force particularly with certain surges (‘Bend The World’) which remind me of Helloween mixed with Euro power metal. There is often a fear that with this sort of metal that the tracks may quickly become generic gallops, but there are some variations of pace and some female vocals too. In general though this is a pacey album that would make an ideal soundtrack to a scene involving hordes of black stallions, mounted by glinting riders, galloping through the fjords, and the likes of ‘Way Of The Paladin’, ‘Golden Wings’ and the hilariously titled ‘Darkfang Keep’ all get the blood flowing with their enthusiasm. Steely, macho metal indeed… now get that drummer.

Neil Arnold

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