ALBUM REVIEW: Live! Against The World – HammerFall
Of the many multitudes of sub-genres within heavy music, power metal is perhaps one of the most deceptively difficult to get right. Inherently cheesy and overblown by its very nature, the act of balancing these elements within metal song-writing has been a task many bands over the years have sought to perfect, with classic pioneers like HELLOWEEN and BLIND GUARDIAN setting a template still carried on by more modern upstarts like LOVEBITES and BEAST IN BLACK. Though not one of the very first in the genre, Sweden’s HAMMERFALL have been nonetheless been plying their trade for some 23 years now, and their latest release sees the band casting an eye back over their long and illustrious career with Live! Against The World, a new live album recorded in February 2020 to a rabid crowd at MHP Arena in Ludwigsburg, Germany.
For hardcore HAMMERFALL fans who will likely make up the majority of its listeners, the real joy to be found in Live! Against The World is surely the sheer amount of the band’s career which it covers. Whilst 2019’s Dominion obviously takes up a good quarter of the space on offer here with tracks like the stomping One Against The World and the brilliantly tongue-in-cheek ode to their homeland (We Make) Sweden Rock, there’s still room for at least one song from every single one of the eleven-strong canon of HAMMERFALL studio albums – from early 90’s cuts like The Dragon Lies Bleeding from much-loved debut Glory to the Brave, and the pseudo-eponymous Let The Hammer Fall from Legacy of Kings, right through to a selection culled from their rather excellent album run of Infected, (r)Evolution and Built to Last in the 2010s; with lesser-played surprises coming in the form of songs like Infected deep-cut Redemption and Keep The Flame Burning from the classic Renegade to name a couple, proving there really is something for fans of every era on offer here.
The latter album even gets its own medley towards the middle of the record too, as the band celebrate 20 years of the record that arguably made them one of power-metal’s most formidable creative forces by cramming as many riffs and solos as humanly possible from the likes of Templars of Steel, Always Will Be, Living in Victory, Destined for Glory and A Legend Reborn into one sprawling near-seven-minute composition that eventually crescendos with the bombastic back-to-back choruses of The Champion and title-track Renegade – much to the audible and enthusiastic delight of the Ludwigsburg audience.
Remarkably for such a comprehensive set, there aren’t really any dips to speak of either, with every song pummelling the speakers with exactly the level of bombast you’d hope for from a band of such heritage. From the opening strains of Never Forgive, Never Forget, it instantly becomes clear that even the band’s newest material stands up to their history. In fact, it’s when HAMMERFALL slow right down for one of that record’s ballads, where they impress maybe most of all, with Second to One – a slow-burn piano-led ballad that sees talismanic frontman Joacim Cans teaming up with Noora Louhimo of Finnish power-metallers BATTLE BEAST for a truly moving meeting of vocal talents carried along by truly sublime guitar work from band founder Oscar Dronjak and his counterpart of the last 12 years Pontus Norgren, that couldn’t sound any more uplifting if it tried. Power-metal often functions best of all when delivered with a sheer bombastic joy that cares not for seriousness, and that’s very much the case here.
Whilst every member of the band put on a stellar performance throughout Live! Against The World’s runtime, it’s Cans who’s perhaps the star of the show here though – whether he’s belting out soaring vocal lines like nobody’s business or bantering with the assembled masses encouraging them to headbang until they “…wake up with SLAYER necks in the morning…” before Hector’s Hymm, the vocalist’s raw charisma is very much front and centre across the record, to great effect. And while much of what Cans does vocally across Live! Against The World is likely very familiar in terms of style to just about anyone with a passing knowledge of the genre, it really can’t be overstated just how much fun it is to listen to him really going for those ridiculous notes at times.
As a document of how HAMMERFALL operate as a live unit in 2020, there really is a lot to love about Live! Against The World. Die-hard fans of both the band and the genre at large are certain to find great enjoyment in the excellently crafted and performed selection of anthems crammed into their show of course, whilst more casual listeners may even find themselves swept up in the sheer over the top-ness of it all – such is the level of grin-inducing fun that this band bring to the table.
Rating: 8/10
Live! Against The World is out now via Napalm Records.
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