The band that takes its name from a 1987 Dio album returns a mere nine months after its debut, DragonSlayer. Unlike many listeners, I didn't find anything overtly righteous or religious about the lyrics from this Swedish quintet, led by guitarist, keyboard player and producer extraordinaire Fredrik Nordström. I just accepted the songs as homages to straight-ahead, feel-good metal. Not every band needs to sing about death and destruction to prove its members have balls.
Evilized follows in the vein of DragonSlayer, which followed in the vein of Dio, Iron Maiden and Judas Priest. Fists-in-the-air, sing-along anthems here; heavy power ballads there. Sure, there's some standard power-metal fare ("Break the Chains," "Live A Lie," and "Fight You 'Till the End"), but there's also some fantastic songwriting that recalls vintage early-Eighties metal enhanced by modern production elements and a contemporary metal sound that falls somewhere between Hammerfall and Nocturnal Rites. Rousing songs like the title track, "Children of the Night" and "Bad Dreams" blend with slower pieces such as "Forevermore" and "The End" to create a well-rounded, old-school album that should bring back sweet musical memories.
Evilized is a better record than DragonSlayer — even if the lyrical and musical themes remain the same. But please, in the name of all that is good in this world, spare me the bravado of songs like "Made of Metal." There's already enough of that rhetoric going around …
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