Made Of Metal

Made of Metal is the fourth album by Halford, a side project fronted by Judas Priest front man Rob Halford. After re-joining Priest back in 2005, the Halford band was all but shelved. Vowing to resurrect it someday when he could be free of Priest commitments, they returned in 2009 with a rather strange Christmas themed album entitled Winter Songs. After raising a few eyebrows with that one, many were wondering if he could ever re-capture the greatness of albums like Resurrection or The Crucible. Like its title implies, Made of Metal is a return to the Priest-infused metal sounds of his better solo band material. With 14 tracks and over 63 minutes of music, there's lots of great songs here but unfortunately a few too many average ones as well.

Most of the better tracks fall much in line with the classic Judas Priest sound with Undisputed, Fire and Ice and Hell Razor having the type of galloping riffs and double bass ferocity of Priest's Stained Class album. The title track combines chunky heaviness and a very catchy chorus section to cruise out front as one of the standout tracks. A continuation of the Hell Bent For Leather idea, this time it's a Nascar racer that challenges them all. Other tracks like Speed of Sound and We Own The Night combine simple power chord riffs and soaring melodic choruses reminiscent of Priest's Point of Entry album with a couple of tracks namely Heartless and Thunder and Lightning having more of a melodic hard rock feel and not really metal at all. A few curve balls are thrown in to mix things up a bit with the very cool Till The Day I Die having more of a celtic/folk feel to the melodies using acoustic guitars as well as slide guitars for the heavier sections. Twenty-five Years sees Rob delivering a gut-wrenching and passionate vocal for this piano based power ballad. Matador and I Know We Stand A Chance fail to make the grade and the album closes with a rather disjointed and weird track called The Mower. Fight-like with its aggressive de-tuned riffs and screaming vocal by Rob, this track is very unstructured with hardly any melody or hook of any sort. An exercise in aggression best describes it.

All in all, besides a couple of "skippers" there's some really solid material on this album. A little lighter sounding and with an overall more melodic structure with the vocals than previous Halford albums, Rob's voice still sounds as great as ever. With a more simplistic and melodic song writing approach than Priest, there are still lots of great riffs throughout and some great trade-off shredding leads but the song writing overall is a notch or two below the first 2 Halford albums. Halford allows Rob to fully exercise his passion for melody - not something he could always do in Judas Priest. Still an enjoyable listen for the fans, there's enough solid songs here to make this one worth your while.