Review by Xephyr for Unleash the Archers - Apex (2017)

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.