Despite their origins in doom and crossover thrash bands, the members of Pennsylvania's
Argus find creative common ground in the realm of so-called traditional heavy metal, where their eponymous 2009 debut matches up extremely well with contemporary competition like San Francisco's
Slough Feg and Chicago's
Bible of the Devil. Of course, no band can be associated with traditional metal without dabbling in a certain amount of slothful doom, as bequeathed to pathetic earthlings some 40 years earlier by founding fathers
Black Sabbath. But it's telling that
Argus' least memorable offerings here, such as "None Shall Know the Hour" and instrumental "The Effigy Is Real," happen to be the most deliberate, as though the musicians had already spent most of their best ideas with their prior bands (including
Penance and
Abdullah). Instead,
Argus are at their best when charging into battle mounted upon galloping metal anthems like "Devils, Devils" and "Eternity (Beyond, Pt. 1)," which are as timeless as the decades separating
Grand Magus and
Iron Maiden.
Argus also fares extremely well when combining those slower and faster tempos into a series of extended epics like "Bending Time," "The Outsider," and the quite spectacular "The Damnation of John Faustus," which adds a proggy organ intro and even a bass solo! And the arguable album climax, "From Darkness...Light," is where the band's twin harmony guitar parts -- already generously sprinkled all over the songs cited above -- really take over; forging an iron-clad testimony to the aforementioned
Maiden and other hard and prog-rock immortals like
Thin Lizzy and
Wishbone Ash (whose third and perhaps best-known album gave
Argus their name, of course). So it is precisely by tapping into this rich musical legacy to compose new classics of their own that
Argus succeed in perpetuating those traditional metal values for the enjoyment of yet another new generation...and surely beyond.