“Majesty” Rebels – CD REVIEW by Adam McCann
Record: NoiseArt Records 2017
There are two sides to the Power Metal coin, there are those bands which take their influences from the likes of Stratovarius and Helloween and then, there is Manowar. Manowar take no prisoners, why do with a guitar what you can do armed with only a broadsword and loincloth? Because of this, it is no wonder that Manowar left an army of bastard children in their wake.
One such band are Germany’s Majesty. Majesty have been raised on a diet of nearly 100% pure organic Manowar and let’s face it, there is nothing wrong with that. However, not all is rape, pillage and plundering, Majesty have had a strange career, a faux break up and a brief name change to Metalforce before returning to Majesty. This ultimately may have affected their career much more than you would expect and coupled with a generally high album output can give the impression that Majesty may have spread themselves far too thin over the years. That being said, Majesty’s previous album, Generation Steel, did make Heavy Metal Meltdown’s Top Ten albums of 2015.
2017 see’s the release of Rebels, the latest album from Majesty and straight from picking up the album, it makes you think something is amiss with the album cover. Gone are the heroic warriors in fantasy homoerotic poses holding their weapon aloft and what you do have is some sort of metal clad death car/dune buggy careening through the wastelands surrounded by explosions in an image that screams more Mad Max than Manowar. This gives rumblings of is there a change in the air?
The answer is possibly. Vague? Yes. After the short intro, Path to Freedom, normal transmission of Majesty begins with Die Like Kings being well, very Majesty. However, something just isn’t quite right here, at first listen, you get the feeling that maybe Rebels is possibly a bit of a rushed job, it sounds very much like a rehashing of a few previous Majesty albums with the lyrical writing and melodies being much less focused than their previous effort. That being said, what is this sort of album without a few wry smiles at cheesy lyrics? After all, it is that sort of tongue in cheek songs about the battles of Heavy Metal which make this music so appealing.
A lot of modernisms and younger colloquial speech has made its way into Rebels, for example, YOLO HM may be a lot of listeners first glimpse at the acronym for ‘you only live once’, but once you get over this annoyance, YOLO HM is actually quite enjoyable. That sentiment pretty much sums up Rebels, there are some very good tracks on here such as Fireheart and the superb ballad, Across the Lightning, but there are also a lot of forgettable tracks. The main issue with the lyrics on Rebels is that they are very childlike at times, there are a lot of ‘fucking this and that’ used alongside the very teenage angst of ‘go away and fuck yourself’ used in the final track Fighting ‘til the End and it all just doesn’t feel very Majesty.
Rebels is what it is, it is another album from Majesty, it was always going to be a tall order to follow up Generation Steel and although a lot of the songs on Rebels are unmemorable, there is still a lot of fun to be had whilst listening to it. That is the story of Rebels and if you don’t like, then it is very much possible that Majesty don’t care and you can go and fuck yourself. 5/10
Adam McCann / MHF Magazine
