Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
You wait for the punch to come, to land somewhere on your body, and rather than close your eyes and accept your fate, you look it square in the face and hope that it is a steely embrace, one of creativity, of the heavyweight and big heart; not one from the sly and the craven, instead one from the cool, the sublime and the handsome sound. It is to listen to the comprehensive, the unassailable, unbound declaration of the return of Udo Dirkschneider and U.D.O. that makes the punch to the emotional pleasure centres such a wait of wonderful expectation.
It scarcely seems possible that 30 years has passed since the release of Animal House, and yet in one of Germany’s finest practitioners of the art-form, arguably even one the continent’s outstanding specialists in the genre, that time spent at the helm of the metal foundry, the Steelfactory serenade is one that still comforts and plays gentle havoc induced pleasure with the senses.
It is in the soothing, magnetic personality and reassurance of what is to come that keeps U.D.O. in the frame, that makes the band in whatever guise or personnel motoring along at such a steady pace, the sound of the juggernaut bringing the faithful out to feel the tremor under their feet; never mind a certain red lorry that injects a corporate poison in the guise of a soft drink, this tremor is made up of the real feeling of exhilaration and excitement.
In tracks such as the album opener Tongue Reaper, Keeper of My Soul, In The Heat of the Night, Hungry and Angry, the excellent A Bite of Evil and Rose in the Desert, U.D.O. keep on coming, the fortress of resistance is breached, shattered, and the final moments of the surrender to positive metal enforcement is cheered from all who have seen the day coming when such albums are more than accepted, they are lauded from all.
An album of no-nonsense, of guided passion and fury against the poppycock and gibberish noise, Steelfactory is the hard and rigid brace being handled in the correct and proper fashion, one that reaffirms Udo Dirkschneider as one of the greats of European Metal.
U.D.O. release Steelfactory on August 31st via AFM Records.
Ian D. Hall