Band: Dream Tröll
Album: The Knight of Rebellion (2017)
Country: England
Genre: traditional heavy metal
Where to buy: Bandcamp
It has been a tremendous year for traditional heavy metal, with bands across the globe reminding us that the genre is far from exhausted. Dream Tröll, out of Leeds, England, leans into trad worship with The Knight of Rebellion, forty-nine minutes of homage to the metal that inspired the band members as nascent metalheads. The album’s seven songs are chock full of heavy metal cliches both musical and lyrical. There’s a Spinal Tap note in the tone here, manifesting as a deep love for the music and its motifs and stereotypes. There’s mockery, but it’s a harmless self-mockery and not a mean-spirited parody. None of this would work at all if the music weren’t great, which it is, and the album is as efficacious at invoking the best things about the traditional heavy metal as it is at giving us catchy, melodic, hard rocking songs. The Knight of Rebellion is that rare kind of trad album that perfectly captures the aspirational, epic tone of high fantasy literature, where knights face great odds, ancient tomes reveal deep secrets, and the gods themselves become actors on a human stage.
The album opens with a swelling string crescendo that cues a slow, horizontal melody played on plucked, distorted guitars. Before the full band comes in, we are treated to a lyre-like backing of the melody, as you might hear played by the street band at a Renn faire. Quiet moments like these, featuring progressions and melodies played on chimes and (synthesized) acoustic strings, appear throughout the album, giving the songs a sense of being played against a medieval backdrop. But that’s just the backdrop, because as soon as the stage is set and singer Rob Stringer begins to croon softly about a time before kings and queens, the music ramps up into the fullness of heavy metal, with a huge guitar chords, rumbling bass, and pounding drums. “Time for Vengeance,” over the course of its eight-plus minutes, provides palm-muted riffs that chug along with the verse progression, harmonized dual guitar melodies over bridges and solos, stately and metallic pulses of bass, and the story of a man destined to be king but who must first face the Death Adder and associated dark armies. It’s entertaining as hell, and the music is extremely fun. The melodies in particular are a blast to listen to, and you can tell the band has a good time too, which I always appreciate.
The rest of the songs are just as enjoyable. “Velvet Drawbridge” is an ode to a legendary blacksmith; “Lost in the Pages” describes a sorcerer hunting for a spell of salvation; “Unwanted by the Gods” details the struggle between advancing technology and the ways of old. All of these are standard fantasy tropes but none of the songs are injured by this in the least. In fact, the earnestness with which Dream Tröll approaches their subject matter is endearing and charming. It ends up being pure instead of puerile. The Knight of Rebellion succeeds at its mandate: to honor the traditions of this kind of heavy metal with excellent, honest songwriting. A lot of metal goes out of its way to avoid anything approaching mirth. By contrast, this album had me smiling like a demon.
Laws Listens 