Midnight Priest-Rainha Da Magia Negra

Stormspell
2009

I put the album title from Portugual's Midnight Priest into Babelfish and it came up as "Queen of the black magic". That makes sense as the cover would go along with that title. This album is sung entirely in Portuguese which was a little startling at first, but I quickly got into where this band was coming from. They wear their influences on their sleeve and they have an obvious love for early Iron Maiden, Judas Prest, Mercyful Fate, Saxon, Thin Lizzy and a few other NWOBHM acts. The album clocks at just under half an hour so all of the songs are relatively brief, but they cut to the chase and get immediately into the meat of each song. Okay it's not that original, but it's still very well played. They how to create and maintain some fantastic duel guitar attacks, the vocals are rough and help build up the intensity of each song. The production values are tight and boost this album right away. This is a celebration of early-mid 80's classic style metal and all that was good about it. If someone had told me this was a lost classic from 1984 rather a release from 2009 then I would have been inclined to believe the, However that doesn't diminish the fact that this is an exciting venture into classic metal. To their credit Midnight Priest do manage to mix their influences on a few songs and the results are impressive. It would be great to see the band do more of that and try to expand on what they began here. Certainly a release that is going to appeal to old style metal fans.