The opening songs all come at you with a great running bass and double kick rhythm, allowing their natural momentum to pull you into the album. “T.V. War” is a smooth regulated train travelling down the tracks, with an easy to abide chorus and vocal line. This is followed by the curiously appealing “Monsterman” which gains your trust easily and without any qualms. “Russian Roulette” has that slightly uneasy shift in tempo that can kill an album, but it is done well here on this song, and still invokes the crowd chant chorus that tends to improve songs when loud and in groups. These three songs make another solid start to the album.
“It’s Hard to Find a Way” is a hard rock ballad, and perhaps the best thing I can say about it is that at least it isn’t a power metal ballad that grew out of this era of metal. It isn’t a ballad in the sense of the word, but lyrically and musically it has moved in that direction, and I still can’t come at things like that. The first side is recovered by “Aiming High” which is an atypical “I love hard rock” raise your fist kinda song, again replete with chanting vocals and guitar solos. Songs like “Heaven is Hell” utilise that tried and trusted method that AC/DC had popularised during the 1980’s, and this is very much in that mould, a slow tempo built around a solid rhythm and moving along in that style for the whole seven plus minutes. It’s either too slow or too long. Perhaps a little of both.
“Another Second to Be” returns us to that faster paced rocking tempo, lifting the mood of the album significantly once again. Udo’s vocals have returned to that higher register again along with the feel of excitement of the album. Perhaps it is only because of the songs like the previous one that makes these kind of tracks stand out, but if that is the case it should be a warning sign. “Walking in the Shadow” again changes that mood, but retains enough of the band’s real character to pull it through. “Man Enough to Cry” is similar in slightly different ways, but now just feels like they are overdoing the chance to find a chorus which appeals to the masses. The album concludes with “Stand Tight” which again builds on this idea of construction a song, which by this stage of the album just feels like it is well overdone.
This isn’t a bad album by any stretch of the imagination, but it is the kind of album you have on in the background and barely notice as it runs through its repertoire. The formula is set from the opening songs and followed throughout, and it’s a very ‘easy listening’ kind of album. Sure the lyrics might be taking on the world, but the easy flow of slow 2/4 drums and rhythm that follows it isn’t inspiring great vertical leaps of excitement. It incites a slow bobbing of the head and a smile of enjoyment that touches the sides of the mouth without eliciting a break for the teeth to shine through. There is little of the commercialism that could be said to have been infused in the music on Metal Heart, but there just needed to be more songs such as “Another Second to Be” on here to bring it to life.
Rather than coming to life with a raging album that sets the precedence, this instead finds itself struggling for air amongst the rising steel of the American invasion of Metallica, Anthrax, Megadeth and Slayer, along with fellow Germans Helloween who had taken on the example set by the guitars of early Accept albums and transformed them into what would be the inspiration for European bands for the next 20 years. This album treads the water of the hard rock line, the comfortable section which they shared with AC/DC. They do what they do well, but whereas they once appeared to be the leaders in what was coming, they by this stage had conformed to settle on the calm waters whilst other took on the storm.
Rating: “For love I had to give you up”. 3/5
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