As retro-metal albums go,
Black Hawk's
Dragonride -- which was released in 2007 but actually replicates what heavy metal sounded like some 20 years earlier -- is about as authentic as they come. That's because, much more than a nostalgic ‘80s metal experiment conducted by a bunch of young punks who stumbled upon their parents' vinyl collections,
Dragonride is in fact the second album released in as many years by a band of veterans who first attempted to launch their career (unsuccessfully) in 1981, never to make it past the demo-recording stage. Until now. All of which means that a fair number of this album's astonishingly convincing musical period pieces ("Dark Strange Night" and "Point of the Sword," for instance) have every reason to sound convincing because they are, after all, just acting their age, being updates on much older material. And so too will listeners who stumble upon this only modestly imaginative but wonderfully familiar song set, which revisits the simpler but timeless charms made popular by ‘80s metal stalwarts ranging from
Judas Priest to
Saxon to
Iron Maiden with eerie exactitude, if not the same commercial appeal. The evocative fantasy scenery depicted on
Dragonride's cover art completes the time-traveling illusion, making this a can't-miss attraction for retro-metal enthusiasts -- not to mention a testament to one band's perseverance in the face of adversity. ~ Eduardo Rivadavia