Brainstorm - 14th album of heavy metal from Germany
Brainstorm
Plague of Rats
Reigning Phoenix Music
28 February 2025
Consider this new album an open invitation to the ways and means of Brainstorm, the German institution of heavy metal with 14 studio albums. They began in 1989 with a thrash-based sound, recording at least four demos until their official full-length debut in 1997. They possess a remarkable and admirable tendency to deliver quality album after quality album, in a way that has proven very consistent, and very reliable, all wonderful traits, while expanding on their thrash-based early albums to a less speed-based brand of headbanging heavy metal.
It took them the better part of a decade for their debut album to finally see light of the day in 1997, but once it did, the boys got on an incredible run, especially the first ten years after 1997, with the albums rolling out until the present. At this point, more than 35 years since their thrashy start, they have become experts at what works for them. Therefore, their new album is a great equilibrium of their big fundamentals. The Brainstorm big fundamentals consists of guitar riffs as their indispensable work ethic. The meat and the bones of Brainstorm signify all things guitar, from power chords, riffs, melodies, hooks and solos, gallops and palm muting, downpicking, and everything else that's headbanging heaviness, and as their career continued this main concept remained while driving the music to adjacent areas, sometimes adding more groovy songwriting or substantially more melodies, adding heavy/power metal flavors, while staying away from all-out sugary, pop, dance influences found in happy-go-lucky power metal.
This new album finds the band at that intersection of all their experience in songwriting, musicianship and studio/recording knowledge. Given that Brainstorm is a conservative band, and not one to make huge unexpected changes, listeners will be pleased to know that the new album does incorporate some interesting elements to go with the standard no-nonsense heavy metal, like some background Indian music melodies to go along with some of the Hindu-themed lyrics. Let's be careful, though! This does not mean that this is folk metal or something. Fear not! Brainstorm still sounds very much like Brainstorm, with some melodies and a bit more studio magic, without really going off the rails with excessive adornments. Finally, the vocals are such a nice change of pace from some of the most irritating styles of vocals in traditional metal: Brainstorm singing is not artificially (annoyingly) high. It's not banshee show-off singing, not strained, not nasal, not groaned singing, not weird singing. It is melodic, male singing, not banshee screaming, and not growling/barking, either. Everything is top notch, from their rhythm section to the production, but it is their riffs and singing, in my opinion, that makes them Brainstorm. This is my new favorite Brainstorm album (until they change my mind with their next one one).
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