Reviews list for Unleash the Archers - Apex (2017)

The levels of hope and positivity in many power metal bands' sound can be the difference between me turning off a record or sitting through the entire length.  Many bands fail to live up to the "power" promised by the genre tag and as is already documented by myself here I fail to get along with most of what I hear within the boundaries of such music.  It was with the same amount of trepidation that I approached Apex having heard very little of the band to understand whether or not I was going to be coming away from the venture with that bitter taste on my tongue again.

What is clear from the off is that there's an energy to UtA that more or less from the first track left me in no doubt that I was going to enjoy this album.  This wicked blend of devilish lead work coupled with solid riffing and equally assured percussion remedied any fears that I had coming into my opening few sessions of listening to it.  When you add into the mix the fact that the vocalist is capable of applying her voice to control perfectly the pace of both individual tracks and the album as a whole then you know you are onto a winner.  Brittney has a real knack for leaping up a couple of notches on the intensity and key of her voice to drive a track further along its usually epic trajectory, keeping the vocals firmly in the driving seat alongside two clearly very talented and hungry sounding guitarists.  Above everything I hear on the record it is her vocals that I take away as the main memory of the album.  What is even more impressive is that there's none of that shrieking and piercing bollocks that goes on with most of her female and (more so) male contemporaries which just shows the confidence she has in her own ability and how that fits in perfectly with the rest of the band also.

On the flip side of the otherwise perfect vocals of Brittney, there's the really annoying attempts of growls from Grant which are at times laughable.  Coming off as more of a hiss than any real growl of substance, they just add a comedy element where I expect they had been intended to add some real menace and threat.  They are the one thing that kept this album from full marks in all honesty and I am genuinely so annoyed with them it is untrue.

Getting back to the positive vibes though, what UtA do over the ten tracks that make up Apex is balance the catchiness with the detail that the more learned power metal fan would enjoy.  For all the memorability of The Matriarch there's heaps of fantastical lyrical content and storytelling to encourage you to get under the skin of those big feisty riffs and track the storyline of the album further.  This leads me to that fucking superb artwork of course which is "The Immortal" - the main character of the album asleep on one of his 1,000 year slumbers.  If ever an album had artwork that matched the quality of the contents inside it is Apex.   In researching this review I read an interview with the headline of "Unleash the Archers: Escapism Without Regrets" which I think is a perfect summary of just how entertaining this band are beyond just the sheer capability of the artists involved, they have clearly poured themselves into this record and the thought and effort in song writing, composition and arrangement shines across this record.

I leave this record each time feeling thoroughly entertained.  Feeling like I have rediscovered my mojo for the enchanted legends and the fantastical landscapes in which they take place.  An immensely uplifting record and one that is going on the vinyl purchase list. 

Standing Above the Rest

I feel like I stumbled on a gold mine when I was randomly recommended Unleash the Archers by a friend a few weeks ago. He had the physical copy of Apex and let me borrow it, so I popped it in my car on my drive home and was greeted with the heavenly blast of soaring power metal. On top of having some of the best and most memorable riffs of 2017 thus far, the concept and the story throughout the album adds a pleasant layer to an amazing power metal base.

The entire album is extremely energetic, always pushing forward with heavy riffs, a nice mix of slower chugging and speedier scale sections to mix up the track list. "Awakening", "The Matriarch", and "Cleanse the Bloodline" have some of the most memorable and catchy riffs I've heard this year from any album. Even most of the choruses are catchy as well, which is tough to do in a power metal album without sounding completely cheesy. Each song brings something slightly new to the table and accents different strong points about the band, whether that's riffs, clean vocals, harsh vocals, slower chug riffs, or full on power metal aggressiveness.  

I honestly didn't notice that the lead clean singer was female, which is both impressive by her and pretty idiotic of me now that I listen back to the album. In my experiences, female leads sometimes have a tough time projecting their voice well on a more aggressive style of music, most of them sounding flat and pretty uninteresting. Unleash the Archers' vocalist Brittney Hayes blew me away with her performance on this album in general, sounding extremely powerful but never going over that cheese line that plagues a lot of power metal albums. Harsh and some clean vocals on "Earth and Ashes" by Grant Truesdell and Andrew Kingsley are also very welcome to break up the album and add more elements while also contributing to the narrative of the album. 

Overall I can't see another power metal release topping this one for 2017. The energy and straight up metal performance Apex gives is something to behold. It has a very balanced mix of styles and a more classic power metal story-line of a character's journey away from a mystical mountain, fighting in battles and roaming about the land, just to be silenced back into the apex's prison. Simplicity back to the roots of power metal like this is a breath of fresh air that Unleash the Archers pulls off very well.