Canada’s heavy metal heroes STRIKER have been launching throwback volleys at the masses since 2009. Their style blends traditional metal ideas with hard rock influences, often to good effect and they’ve always been capable of hooky songcraft. They also have a tendency to be tongue-in-cheek at times, refusing to take themselves too seriously. These are all admirable traits and make Striker easy to root for.
Here comes seventh outing, “Ultrapower“, with a craptastic cover and an even worse band photo with the guys sporting ridiculous sunglasses and fun ’80 mullets. And this is an absolute party of an album. Striker have never strayed too far from their classic metal origins but in recent years and especially on the last couple of albums they have embraced more influences from hard rock and glam metal but written some of the catchiest heavy metal tunes committed to tape.
After five years of writing and recording, Striker have come up with their boldest and most daring album yet. Pulling in sounds and influences from here, there and everywhere this is the sound of a band doing exactly what they want to.
It features some of the band’s catchiest and most accessible songwriting as well as some of their most leftfield moments. The album has plenty of tunes which are quintessential Striker such as ‘Ready For Anything’ and ‘Turn The Lights Out’ being full on anthemic heavy metal but there is big embracing of 80s pop-rock and AOR especially in ‘City Calling’ with some weird vocoder vocals and the wonderfully slick ‘Give It All’ with the retro synths and saxophone (yes really) and sounds like it is taken from the soundtrack of a forgotten 80’s movie.
One of the best songs is ‘Blood Magic’ which starts with a cool spaghetti western influenced intro before switching to some pure pounding heavy metal and ‘BEST of the BEST of the BEST’ is an absolute party anthem but one of the real surprises is ‘Live To Fight Another Day’ which was originally a standard Striker song at the initial writing stage but ended up becoming a glorious piece of synthwave which whilst being a real departure for the band works incredibly well.
This is an album that has so much energy to it. It is a pure adrenaline shot of fun and joy. The band also sound like they are having the biggest party whilst recording it with energised and passionate performances all round.
The vocals from Dan Clearly have never sounded better, the guitar work from Tim Brown and John Simon Fallen is exquisite with a barrage of riffy goodness and shredtastic leads whilst the rhythm section of bassist Pete Klassen and drummer Jono Webster power through and crash and smash.
These may be catchy and poppy tunes but they carry some rhythmic heft to them.
“Ultrapower” is quite frankly a magnificent album. It has a feel good 80s movie soundtrack aura about it with the spirit of artists such as John Farnham and Stan Bush standing tall alongside pure 80’s metal throwback.
If you love 80’s rock and metal then this album is going to have you grinning from ear to ear. I think I’m gonna be grinning for days after several listens.
Highly Recommended
1. Circle Of Evil
2. Best Of The Best Of The Best
3. Give It All
4. Blood Magic
5. Sucks To Suck
6. Ready For Anything
7. City Calling
8. Turn The Lights Out
9. Thunderdome
10. Live To Fight Another Day
11. Brawl At The Pub
Dan Cleary – Vocals
Tim Brown – Guitar
John Simon Fallon – Guitar
Pete Klassen – Bass
Jono Webster – Drums
Striker – Ultrapower 2024, MP3+FLAC
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