Damien-Stop this war, 1989

Ohio based band Damien kind of remind me of Malice from Oregan. In that both were mid/late 80's bands that sounded quite a bit like Judas Priest. Malice sound a little more like Priest in the vocal department and Damien sound a little more like them in the music department. Ultimately I prefer Damien to Malice due to more hooks and less repitition. This is their sophomore effort and it's a total of ten tracks. It's certainly not overly original as it has a big dose of Judas Priest and lesser splashes of maybe Accept and Armored Saint. If you are going to copy someone then it should at least be someone good and they have the right influences then. Yet they do manage to keep it lively and heavy with some strong rhythms constantly going. I guess this album would be refered to as "classic metal" now although back then it just would have been called "metal" or maybe even "power metal" as that phrase was just coming into use and hadn't yet just been assigned to mainly European bands. I had a sampler cassette in 1989 that included the track "Rising dawn" from this album and it drew me in. I bought the album based on that one track and wasn't disappointed. There are tracks like "Matilda" and "Corpse Grinder" where the guys ran short on ideas where the lyrics were concerned, but largely it's steady and fairly memorable material. I could easily imagine these guys being a good live act as their songs are strong and roll along well.Another minor complaint might be that if someone played this for me without telling me what year it was made then I might guess about 85 or 86, but you can see up top it came out in 89. That means they were maybe a little behind when this was released and that may have kept them from getting very far. Still I have listened to it three times in the two days since I bought my new copy on cd so that should say something.