NEW FIREWIND ALBUM ART IS ALL FIREWINDY N’ STUFF

I’m not, generally speaking, a huge power metal fan, but I love Firewind, and I love their new album, Days of Defiance. Does that mean that Firewind are a very, very good power metal band, and my tastes in the subgenre are highly discerning, or does that mean that Firewind are a very, very bad power metal band, and they appeal to me because they’re so unlike most of their peers?

I don’t know and I don’t care. You could call this “poopy metal” and I’d still listen to it. The music kicks all kinds of ass, Gus G. is the man, and for all the silliness and melodrama usually associated with power metal, it features the single most pithy lyric I’ve heard so far this year, in the song “Embrace the Sun”: “You can’t change the world, but you can change yourself.” Maybe that sentiment seems cheesy, but when I first heard it, I was like, “Whoa. That is some mind-blowing shit. And if we all changed ourselves, we’d change the world, man!!!” And I wasn’t even high when I heard it!

Here’s the newly released cover art for Days of Defiance, which comes out October 26 on Century. It’s pretty much exactly the cover art you’d expect for a new release from this band, but that doesn’t make the music it contains any less rockin’.

And I’ll have an interview with Gus G. soon.

-AR