New Wave of British Heavy Metal boys Millennium have a crunching new album out. Awakening. It’s good enough (and loud enough) to wake anybody. I mean that in a good way!
Back in the NWOBHM halcyon days saw Millennium form. A debut album appeared in the mid-80s which was well received but did not generate big bags of money for the band, who went their separate ways towards the end of the decade.
Spring forward three decades and Millennium reform and do a few festivals. That new momentum has seen the recording of this fine new album which features some original members, not least vocalist Mark Duffy.
False Reality starts things off. A proper attention grabber with a monster riff, nifty lead work and a cutting comment on modern society. Meaty and in your face from note one.
Have a listen for yourself. Here’s the lyric video.
The following ten tracks all hit the spot and then some. Riffs and big chords fly around effortlessly as do the punch but never too flashy solos. Pounding tub-thumping and bass back it up with Duffy spitting out the vox with venom and feeling equally as demanded by the variety of the song writing.
Searching hits hard. Lies all Lies is a proper “fist puncher” with the shout-along chorus.
The Calling boasts a slashing riff which cuts like a rapier interspersed with a bridge that sticks in the mind. Witch Hunt (the stand-out on an album of stand-outs) is both darkly doomy and slightly proggy with a medieval tinge to fit the subject matter. Superb.
The closing trio of When Mad Men Rule, Revolution Calls and Possessed is a triumph. No mistake. Indeed, Possessed has another of those shout-along sections which bore in to the brain and stay there.
Millennium have an album which will appeal to the old NWOBHM-types such as your reviewer who remember the band from back then and any self-respecting rock/metal lover of today.
Awakening is excellent indeed. The NWOBHM origins are obvious and the album is (forgive me a cliché) “all killer and no filler”. A crunching slab of well-crafted, well-performed metal with attitude and feeling.
>> MILLENNIUM AWAKINGING AVAILABLE FROM AMAZON HERE <<
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