Hammerfall
Glory to the Brave

This is an outstanding album in every way, and what makes it even more impressive, is that it's this swedish power metal bands' debut release. Jesper Strömblad from the melodic death metal band In Flames have contributed a lot with the song writing, which is not suprising, as this is atleast as good as Jesper's albums. The album openes with the really magnificent (and I mean REALLY magnificent, in fact Hammerfall's best song) "The Dragon Lies Bleeding". The riff on this one is simply ... amazing.

Other awesome songs are "Hammerfall", "Child of the Damned", "Steel Meets Steel", "Stone Cold" and "Unchained". Also, the 7 minutes long self titled ballad which concludes the album, is very good as well.

In some ways I preferr this album in head of Legacy of Kings, though the production is better on LoK and the song writing have improved at some parts. I just think that this album has more ... emotion, maybe.

Reviewed by Erlend