Triumpher are one of those newer bands whose name I’ve heard tossed around for the past few years, but have never gotten around to exploring. Considering they’ve mostly been namedropped by the NWOTHM crowd, and are signed to No Remorse, I hastily assumed they were yet another one of the endless heavy/power/speed Thundersteel era Riot worship bands who make up the bottom half of Keep it True bills. And boy, did I assume wrong. Triumpher are a power metal band, no doubt, though the brand of power metal they specialize in is much closer to Manowar and ’90s Virgin Steele. In other words, they are bombastic and over the top in the best way possible.
Piercing the Heart of the World is Triumpher’s third album, and if their previous two efforts are as compelling as this one, I have a lot of catching up to do. As inferred in the last paragraph, this isn’t just power metal; this is epic power metal. Every aspect from this album, from the arrangements and production to the instrumentation and individual performances, is larger than life. With this in mind, epic power metal is a niche that cannot be half sold. You either give it your all, or die a cowardly death for attempting anything less. Triumpher, like their moniker implies, falls into the former.
Let’s start with the vocals of the aptly named Mars Triumph. Heaven forbid, if anything were to happen to Eric Adams, and Joey DeMaio insisted Manowar “Carry On” (pun fully intended), Triumph would be the guy for the gig. His rasped delivery is a dead ringer for Adams in his prime, boasting both ungodly range and unrelenting force. Even more intriguing is the way Triumph melds these vocals with growls characteristic of ’90s extreme metal, similar to Harry “The Tyrant” Conklin (or Leviathan Thisiren) on latter day Satan’s Host albums. Interestingly enough, these influences extend beyond just the vocals.
Throughout the course of Piercing, Triumpher incorporates riffs, drumming, and various other musical tropes reminiscent of ’90s melodic black metal, specifically that of Dissection. It’s a unique combo, but one that works, particularly on cuts like “The Mountain Throne” and “Erynies”. When not flexing this unusual blackened power metal vein, we’re face to face with the usual battle hymns that come with an album of this nature (“The Flaming Sword”, “Naus Apidalia”), as well as monoliths on which the epic songwriting moves one in a manner that few acts today could, save for maybe Fer de Lance (“Black Blood”, “Destroyer”).
It’s this last aspect, the power of the writing and performances themselves, that elevates Piercing to masterpiece level in my humble opinion. Sure, one can draw comparisons to Manowar, Virgin Steele, Dissection, and assorted Hellenic black metal acts, but at no point does Triumpher come off as a cheap imitation as any of those bands. They sound purely themselves, and certainly boast a level of confidence in such that exudes through every last note of this album. Indeed, Triumpher are bound to pierce through the heart of the metal world with this opus.
10 out of 10
Label: No Remorse Records
Genre: Epic Power Metal
For fans of: Manowar, Virgin Steele, Dissection
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