Release Day Roundup: 5/14/25

EchoSoul – Time of the Dragon (thrashy power metal)

At this almost-half-way point of the year, I'd say the biggest musical trends in terms of quality have mostly surrounded the progressive spectrum, along with the metalcore revival well and truly hitting its stride, and maybe a bit of a post-black rejuvenation as well. At the same time, it's also been a sneakily strong year for power metal as well. Between that new Avantasia album (which I'm still spinning on the reg), Empyrean Sanctum (whose singer's other band Katagory V also have a pretty killer album out today) and the forthcoming return of Black Majesty, there's more quality power metal going around these days than you can shake a valiantly raised sword at.

Amid, and arguably leading this charge are also Indiana's EchoSoul. While the band bill themselves as more of a progressive prospect, Time of the Dragon is a fairly straightforward affair that leans far closer to the thrash side of things than its overtly power metal presentation suggests(—another genre that's having a low-key resurgence at the moment). Although they are displayed far more prominently on their 2020 debut, The End of Darkness (which I also strongly encourage you to check out), the band still have the technical chops to keep up with their competition, they just also have the song writing sensibility to know when to reign it in and let the riffs speak for themselves. Indeed, the only thing keeping Metallica and Megadeth from being this album's most immediate reference points are the melodic vocals, although even these come with more of a traditional, heavy metal mid-range delivery than you might expect from an album with an angelic, demon-slaying Templar on the cover.

It's nevertheless a surprisingly varied record. There's plenty of classic Judas Priest and old-school Iced Earth on display, alongside some genuinely heavy offerings like "Instruments of Chaos and "Invisible Empire". Then there's "Hallowed Ground", which goes full Iron Maiden, bringing some distinctly Dance of Death-style guitar harmonies and vocal melodies to the mix, while "New Conspiracy" ends the album in pounding, almost-Alterbridge-esque fashion, and shock album highlight "Sister Suicide" is an almost Skid Row-caliber power ballad. Time of the Dragon is an album that has no qualms letting you know exactly what it is, yet what it has in store might still surprise you, and few are likely to withstand its compulsive charge.

Ondfødt – Dimsvall (black metal)

While we're taking stock of things. Deciding to eradicate basic black metal from these columns is one of the best decisions I've ever made. I still end up listening to most of them, in order to weed them out, but the satisfaction I get every time I hit delete on some shittily-produced, xerox-covered and utterly uninspired black metal record more than makes up for it. (Brutal and blackened death metal are also on thin ice, but at least it takes skill to do what they do, and they also have the decency to put a bit of effort into their presentation.)

I'll still let a few basic black metal albums through, if something happens to catch my ear, or if they actually bothered to produce it properly and get some decent cover art. Indeed, you'll notice quite a few "black metal" tags amid this week's offerings, but it's been a while since I've heard a straight-up black metal album that's as good as this. ...As far back as the last Ondfødt album maybe? Yet while that record grabbed me with it's extra thrashy twist, Dimsvall is about as black metal as it gets, they just actually bothered to write some really good songs as well. It really does go to show that most modern black metal is just bad actually, and the back-to-back successes of Det Österbottniska Mörkret (2023) and now Dimsvall have propelled them from one-off curiosities to the forefront of the modern black metal rankings, while also giving me hope that the genre might not be entirely barren after all.

Hopefully they're not racist.