Florida’s Heavy/Power metal band, Helms Deep, has released their second album, Chasing the Dragon. This is the follow-up to their excellent 2023 debut Treacherous Ways. For those thinking…Hmmmm I know where I have heard this band name before. Well if you are a Tolkien fan then you will remember it is an epic battle in the Lord of the Rings books/movies. Peter Jackson envisioned this series of movies and this battle perfectly. Chasing the Dragon is 11 songs in an hour – a lot of music.

The brief “Wing Chun” intro is beautifully constructed to Asian stylized music of yore, then right into “Black Sefirot”. This song has a great bass guitar opening sequence and the sounds accompanying it are magical sounding. The music gets into a gallop with scorching guitar solos and Alex Sciortino and Ray DeTone provide a great guitar duo indeed. Alex can reach those high vocals like you would not believe. He is incredible. Check out the highs as he screams the song title. The music while sounding fresh, really pulls from 80’s power metal in many ways. Definitely Iron Maiden and Helloween are some major influences on this act. This is a fun song to open the album with. The production is not overly produced and has an excellent organic feel to it.

The title track has a great opening drum segment that gets faster as Hal Aponte helps tie in the rhythm section. He’s originally from Long Island’s Cold Steel – talk about a blast from the past, from my neck of the woods. Another big surprise with this band you might be unaware of is John Gallagher from UK’s long time running Raven is the band’s bassist as well as providing vocals too. He is terrific on this and towards the end of this fast power metal song the guitar solos kick ass alongside some ruthless drum rolls, then back into the galloping.

“Craze of the Vampire” packs a crash-bang wallop with the opening guitar segment. It’s melodious and so damn catchy. The song gets into a great 80’s metal gallop with those power metal moments as well as the vocal tracks. There is some killer bass guitar playing and strumming going on all over this song, and the song takes on a jam session sequence for a bit where the isolated bass guitar comes rolling in and more guitar solos erupt. The excellent vocals return towards the end of the track and I like how the band ends this song.

“Frozen Solid” sounds like it was lifted from 1985 with the soaring guitar riffs and terrific, slower-paced moments. The sounds on this album also have an influence from Manilla Road as well as Omen. I notice some Battle Cry moments from Omen’s classic debut. The song then kicks things up a notch with the gallop and the 2.46 drum rolls, then right into the power metall-y faster moments, more like speed metal, really reminds me of King Diamond to some degree. Excellent guitar solos and the song continues in the speed metal pattern until the end of the song. SOOOOOOOO killer!!!

Chasing the Dragon is such a killer power metal album and as great as their debut was this bests it. The harmonies, melodies, and song structures push this album into the stratosphere. So catchy, and Helms Deep truly knows how to deliver great music and song writing. Hopefully, the band gets to tour and showcase their skillset and bring this music more to the masses.

[Visit the band's website]

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