You gotta celebrate them. ‘Young’ bands worshipping the well-trodden grounds of good ol’ speedy Heavy Metal. Sounds that harken back to times when the only genre pretty much was that very same one. These were the times when fledgling Hard Rock bands tried themselves at that new devil’s music many old farts of that era took exception with.
Of course, it would not take long until the new metal world branched out into a gazillion sub-genres and blossomed into that ill-fated Yggdrasil ov Metal we know today. But until that happened, things were easy and spawned some of the greatest metal bands still in operation today.
So, in 2015, the US-based act Tower saw the light of day. For some reason, the two previous records never quite clicked with the RMR crew. But once Let There Be Dark hit our turntable, this felt like a five-alarm fire. The old geezers over at the Review Desk still have a sweet spot for anything unwieldily called NWoBHM1 or NWoTHM.2 But whatever. Both of these acronyms sound just like a throatache on steroids. Thus, this disk positively screamed for serious attention, good, bad, or indifferent. And we’re just here for the music. So ordered!
And what you ordered is what you get. Let There Be Dark won’t hunt in good ol’ Hard Rock’s backyard, as the title suggests. So, all of you AC/DC fans will have to move somewhere else. Instead, Tower serves their fan crowd with a bunch of tracks, hardened in the blue fire of Heavy and Traditional Metal of the ’80s. A sure-footed delivery of whatever was on the menu back in time, complete with a speed problem and too many octanes to handle with just two guitars, a bass, a mighty drumkit, and a vocalist on fire. And don’t expect any innovation, either. You’ll find the usual array of references to old masters of the trade. Some of them dead, but most still alive.
Motörhead, Judas Priest, and way too many hints at early Iron Maiden, somewhere in between Seventh Son of a Seventh Son and the X Factor,3 come to mind. Go ahead and hit Let There Be Dark, the title track, in case of doubt. And tell us what you found. Albeit, the record’s tendency to lean a tad too far into the good ol’ Sunset Strip fare won’t really help matters along. Even when admitting that this here crew may have been a bit too harsh with the Hair Metal crowd in the past.
And as always, Heavy Metal pieces stand and fall with the vocalist, and Tower delivered beautifully yet again. There’s no escape once the mighty pipes of one Sarabeth Linden with her lofty croons and mighty roars sink their steely claws into your temporal lobe. A delivery style that often eerily reminded me of Stygian Crown’s4 Melissa Pinion. She’ll just ride roughshod over everything in her way. And besides, her style perfectly mirrors the badass assault Tower‘s music inflicts on the unsuspecting listener. Better put your crash helmet on, this is just merciless power and a built-in towering5 aggression descending on you. And all of that comes in high-pitched, loud riffs, harmonious leads, and licks, pierced by hardened solos that probably should calm down the general mayhem some. Not that it worked very well.
And boy did we like those special elements that suddenly found their way into the mix. Such as the ominous bell tolling leading into the excellent Holy Water. Or take the orientally-tainted interlude called Legio X Fretensis. The intro leading into an extremely powerful and maidenesque Iron Clad. And all that frenetic action helps to keep the fans interested and to break the monotony that often sets in on those traditional metal pieces. That said, the B side of the record starts to lose some steam, subtle as it may be. It is thus great that at the end of the tracklist, Don’t You Say moves in like one of them steam hammers to save the day.
But let’s put a tent around this circus, shall we? Let There Be Dark sports a very powerful and expertly executed Heavy Metal piece. Yours truly was very surprised to find a relatively young crew at the helm of something that sounded like some invigorated Saxon spawn with its aging members gone through a time machine. Put differently, Tower took all the best cuts of a decades-old genre, injected some serious amps, and just had at it. And the outcome was an astonishingly authentic piece of Heavy and Traditional Metal. One that feels like some sort of way back machine to times long gone.
Record Rating: 7/10 | Label: Cruz Del Sur | Web: Official Band Site
Release Date: 21 March 2025