Due to external circumstances, it’s been some time since the release of the Kill Or Get Killed album from Iron Savior, but now the power metal band from Hamburg, Germany is back.
The band will release Skycrest their brand new album on 4th December, and in the mean time have issued singles and accompanying videos previewing the album, all of them available on AFM Records.
The first single was ‘Our Time Has Come‘, and more recently they have followed that up with ‘Souleater’. You can take in both videos right here at RAMzine.
Founded as a solo project in 1996, by Piet Sielck, who established his reputation as both guitarist and producer, he has endeavoured to ensure that over the years the quartet has not only grown in depth but in character.
They have released ten studio albums, one live CD/DVD, with many chart entries including 2016’s Titancraft and 2019’s Kill Or Get Killed, with more than 7.5000,000 streams of the anthem ‘Heavy Metal Never Dies’.
Sielck, spent two years busy working on new songs straight after the release of Kill Or Get Killed, but ran into problems, as he explained.
“Over the two years I sometimes lost my connection to the songs, I composed and approved them and then… I did something else first. Therefore, in the hot phase of production, when I worked intensively on it again, I was sometimes completely surprised at how good the material actually is. After almost every lead vocal that was finished, I had a new top favuorite. That never happened to me before.
“During the production of Skycrest the fortune put a few spokes in the wheel, in the form of a pandemic and a serious illness of our bassist Jan (Who thank, God, has now completely recovered). That fact certainly rubs off on the creative process, but does not focus on the negative events. On the contrary, it binds the band together a good deal more. Corona also had an influence, of course, and at once precisely not. During the lockdown I´ve had a lot of time, but I couldn’t manage anything creatively. I just didn’t manage to write great lyrics and positive songs in this heavy times.
“I also didn’t want this depressive corona mood to appear on the album. We don’t live in Seattle and do tune our guitars, so depression is not us. I still had to motivate and discipline myself strongly, but then things went smoothly, the ideas and the enthusiasm returned. I allowed the positive energies much more to happen than the negative ones. So the bottom line is that Iron Savior is and will remain positive and uplifting.”
For all these reasons, Skycrest has become a very personal album, sometimes subtly in between the lines of the lyrics, sometimes rather drastic, especially in the ballad ‘Ease Your Pain’ performed by Eckert.
Recording took place at Powerhouse Studios by Sielck, who also produced, played guitar and sang. As noted, Jan S. Eckert played bass and sang, Patrick Klose played drums, and Joachim (Piesel) Küstner also played guitar.
Tracks featured are: ‘The Guardian’, ‘Skycrest’, ‘Our Time Has Come’, ‘Hellbreaker’, ‘Souleater’, ‘Welcome To The New World’, ‘There Can Be Only One’, ‘Silver Bullet’, ‘Raise The Flag’, ‘End Of The Rainbow’, ‘Ease Your Pain’ and ‘Ode To The Brave’.
“I think Skycrest has all the potential to become one of the best albums that Iron Savior has ever released,” said Sielck.
You can also check Iron Savior out on Spotify and through AFM Records.
Iron Savior has just released a self-made audio video for ‘Raise The Flag‘ from the album, with Sielck sending a message to everyone this festive season: “Hope to be back in the car and on the road as soon as possible to meet up and party again with all you great folks out there and share a beer or two!“
