You know, underneath the corpse paint — which, yes, I still dust off every Halloween — the obscure band tees, and music so extreme it’d make most people’s ears bleed, there still beats the heart and soul of a metalhead. Strip away all the genre-snobbery, the endless arguments over what counts as what, and it’s really simple: I fucking love heavy metal. Always have, always will.

I’m old enough to remember when subgenres weren’t even a thing. Before thrash kicked the door down and cleared the path for death, black, sludge, folk, or whatever-the-fuck “Tibetan Nose Flute Metal” you want to make a joke about — bands were either rock, or they were metal. That was it. No endless tags, no pedantic squabbles. Just riffs, solos, and the glorious racket of drums being battered to hell. Even the NWOBHM, with its absurdly long acronym, kept “Heavy Metal” right there in the name. And for me, as a greasy little kid with a battle jacket covered in half-sewn patches, that was all I needed.

Those formative years were spent headbanging to anything that had thunderous drums, screaming vocals, and guitar solos so widdly they practically lifted you off the floor. That’s what made me fall in love with this music in the first place. And although my tastes have sprawled all over the map since then — into the harshest black, the most cavernous death, and the weirdest experimental nonsense you can throw at me — I still get a jolt of that same old thrill whenever I throw on a new Iron Maiden record. The goosebumps, the grin, the urge to turn it up just one notch louder.

But here’s the thing: it’s rare as fuck these days to stumble upon a new band in that classic heavy metal mould that hits me with that exact same rush. Nostalgia is powerful, and when you’ve got decades of history wrapped up in a genre, a lot of modern bands just feel like weak echoes of the giants. They copy the sound, but they don’t capture the spirit. Which is why War Grave’s Free Will has knocked me on my arse.

This album is everything I want heavy metal to be. It’s sharp, it’s fiery, it’s packed with riffs that lodge themselves in your skull, and it brims with the kind of energy that makes you feel fifteen again, even if your knees say otherwise. In short? This is what it would sound like if Helloween and Judas Priest had a baby. A loud, obnoxious, leather-clad baby that grew up too fast and came storming out of the gate with a fistful of anthems.

The guitars are absolute standouts — galloping riffs, soaring harmonies, solos that walk the line between technical fireworks and pure, fist-pumping joy. The rhythm section is tight and driving, giving every track that kick of momentum it needs. And the vocals? Powerful as hell. You can hear shades of classic Halford and Kiske in there, but it never feels like parody. It feels authentic, like the band have absorbed the lessons of the past but are still writing for the present.

The songs themselves avoid the pitfall of sounding interchangeable. Each one has a hook, a twist, or a moment that makes it stand out. You can blast this start to finish without feeling like you’ve been stuck in one endless loop of riffs. That variety, combined with the consistency of execution, is what takes Free Will from “decent nostalgia trip” to “fuck me, this is good.”

War Grave haven’t reinvented the wheel here, but they’ve made it spin faster, louder, and with more fire than most of their peers. Free Will is a love letter to the heavy metal I grew up with, delivered with enough passion and precision to remind me exactly why I fell in love with this music in the first place. And if that isn’t worth shouting about, I don’t know what is.

Free Will is out September 26th.

CHOICE CUT: Only Here And Now

RATING: 4 OUT OF 5

RATING SYSTEM:

• 0: Fucking Shit
• 1: Shit
• 2: Not Bad Shit
• 3: Pretty Good Shit
• 4: Amazing Fucking Shit
• 5: The Best Shit You Will Ever Hear

PRESS SOURCE: Imperative PR.