Formative Albums 2 - Condition Red by Iron Savior

Formative albums day two! After becoming a massive fan of Iron Maiden, I had searched around for other metal bands to get into but nothing ever quite clicked in the same way - when I went off to university in 2002 and had an always-on broadband connection, the search sped up considerably. When looking up something about Iron Maiden on Darklyrics, I got curious about the band immediately below them on the list - "Iron Savior" - at first thinking that they must be just cheaply imitating the name to get attention, but out of curiosity I took a listen via the new album preview feature on Amazon (because I could, with my newly discovered ADSL speeds!)

When I played the title track of Condition Red, I got a huge and pleasant surprise - this sound was still full of energy, but with an even more positive and melodic sound. Remember that this was the era of the height of nu-metal, the opposite of music, so hearing a metal band with musicality to it felt like a rare treat. The vocals in particular had such incredible power behind them, with massive choir harmonies behind every chorus. But on top of that, when I looked at the band's site I found that every song had a description attached to it that detailed where it fit into a continuous science fiction story about the fate of Atlantis and their biomechanical superweapon, the eponymous Iron Savior. This was another thing that I had no idea existed - I was familiar with concept albums, but this was an entire concept band. I instantly ordered their first and most current albums, and listened to them nearly non-stop for several months.

Nowadays they're on their eleventh album - the expanding story has been more in the background recently but they haven't lost any momentum. I love Piet Sielck's songwriting and production styles, and honestly try to emulate them for my own music - he's active on Facebook and has been very helpful with advice the couple of times I've asked him! He was a founding member of what was later to become Helloween, and has been the producer for a significant amount of Germany's power metal output for the last couple of decades - as a result, it was from here that I gradually discovered the entire European power metal universe.