Remember that song “Runaway Train” by Soul Asylum? The jangly acoustic ballad one with the music video that featured milk cartoon-esque missing kids and became a socially conscious moment in the height of alternative rock in the early 90s? Do we need to remake that music video in a way that raises awareness of all the missing great metal records in the first chunk of this year (How would that even work — Future Pigeon)? Am I being dramatic and quite possibly a petulant baby? Maybe! But we’re about to hit April here, and I’m a little concerned that we don’t have anything… correction, that I don’t have anything on my list of 2026 metal releases that I can legitimately consider as a great record, and only a few that are somewhat barely scratching the category of “very good”. This lack of quality metal in this year has not only paled in comparison to the blistering start that we had in 2025, but its birthed aftereffects such as a meandering, contemplative state that leads one to looking up old alternative rock bands remembered from childhood such as the aforementioned Soul Asylum because I’m listless and uninspired by most new releases. I even caught myself admitting out loud the other day that I now can appreciate “Lightning Crashes” by Live, a band that I hated with a passion back in the day for what I still deem are legit reasons. I need help. Metal help!
So lets be positive about this situation and at least look at what’s scratching that “very good tier”, and straightaway I’ll bring up the new Greyhawk album Warriors of Greyhawk, a very Manowar-in-spirit titled new album that introduces their new vocalist Anthony Corso. He is replacing of course, the celebrated but short tenured prior vocalist Rev Taylor who has gone onto pursue an opera career to apparent success (congrats on that). Taylor was a huge reason why those first two Greyhawk albums were celebrated releases within the power metal community, and his departure is an enormous loss I believe for the band and for the power metal scene as a whole, because he really did have a unique, smooth baritone thing going for him. Apparently, that lower register was at odds with the demands of some of the material on those two albums that required a higher reach, but I never got to see them live so I can’t attest to those problems. This is so similar to Falconer’s Mathias Blad dipping out after his first two albums with that band in the early 2000s that I can’t help but wonder if like Blad, Taylor will eventually return to the Greyhawk fold in the future. Regardless, Corso is a fine vocalist in his own right, his vocals more naturally suited to a higher register no doubt, but he has enough midrange to somewhat modulate between the old Greyhawk sound and this newer, updated version.
Do I love this new album? Not quite, but it is relatively enjoyable for what it is, and “Land of Ashes” is a pretty rockin’ song that reminds me of material from the first two albums. Corso hits the right notes on this one, balancing a Euro metal soaring Kiske-ian approach with enough weighty midrange to prevent this from sounding entirely too much like Dream Evil at times (I mean I get serious vibes on a couple songs throughout). I also really enjoyed the album closer “Eternal Quest”, an epic built with mortar equal parts Maiden, Scorpions, and Hammerfall, and Corso’s midrange, reigned in vocal approach here is something I would like to see him employ more often than the prototypical higher register stuff (again, he’s fine at it, but we’ve got enough bands doing that). My larger concern is that the best song on the album is “Chosen”, with guest vocals by none other than, you guessed it, Rev Taylor, and hearing him again for maybe the last time in this context is so awesomely bittersweet. The contrast with Corso on the track itself isn’t as dramatic as you’d expect, but it does highlight that Taylor’s unorthodox approach really gave the band a unique flavor that they just don’t have anymore without him. Dammit. Its the hallmark of any transitional album for fans to not be entirely onboard with a new vocalist change, but maybe they should’ve avoided calling attention to what we’re ultimately losing.
Another very good release was the new self-titled album by Temple Balls (yeah), a Finnish hard rock/trad metal band who has been releasing music since 2015 but I’m only just hearing about now. The bio on Spotify cites Van Halen and Aerosmith as influences, and for sure you can hear that stuff there, even splashes of something more obscure (to American audiences anyway) such as Thunder. I often get flashes of Tesla and even Cinderella’s swagger and strut when hearing tracks such as “Lethal Force” and “There Will Be Blood”. These are very catchy tunes, and there’s no respite throughout the album of hooks in your face and some fairly awesome riff sequences courtesy of the band’s late guitarist Niko Vuorela, who sadly passed away in 2025 after a three year battle with cancer. The band have released and promoted this album in accordance with his wishes but have hinted at being uncertain about what their future holds, which is understandable, but still a bummer to consider given just how much I’ve enjoyed this introduction to them. I’ve craved a good newer hard rock band like this for awhile now, and Temple Balls seem to strike the right balance between joyful exuberance and frivolity paired with a precision metallic undertone pinning everything together.
Similarly I thought the throwback classic metal approach of Tailgunner resulted in a pretty strong record in Midnight Blitz, and though the Iron Maiden derived name would speak to that band’s strong influence, this UK band has a tinge of pop metal in their sound that does prevent their sound from being predictable. I was introduced to this on the last MSRcast episode we recorded, and it’s been in consistent rotation since then, hitting that spot of something that sounds classic and comforting yet still has a fresh, exciting spin to it. There’s a really solid vocalist within this band’s ranks in Craig Cairns, sort of a Sebastian Bach meets Theocracy’s Matt Smith in his vocal approach, merging some serious lung capacity with a knack for deft melodies. Points for solid production on this album too, it sounds like something from the late 80s without the reverb-y drums, in a way that I’ve always wished Enforcer would aim for sonically. And before I forget, I wanna throw some minor praise to Aeon Gods, a band I previously regarded as yet another entrant into the high stakes game of gimmicky power metal. Don’t get me wrong, they are guilty of that, with vocalist Alexander Hunzinger and keyboardist Anja Hunzinger choosing to leave their two decades long underground symphonic metal band Aeternitas (does anyone else remember these guys?) in the dust in favor of choosing the Victorius route (Sumerian mythology instead of ninjas and dinos is an improvement I’ll admit). That being said, their new album Reborn to Light is decent, it even has one really excellent tune in the opener “Birth of Light” with a chorus that is epic and infectious. A decent symphonic metal record worth checking out at least, just don’t watch the music videos.
The new Vandor album The Ember Eye Part II: The Portal of Truth is a damn good substitute for anyone missing old Edguy, because their vocalist Vide Bjerde has a real Tobias Sammet tinge to his vocal tone that is startling in its similarity. The songwriting throughout is sometimes hit and kinda miss, not quite reaching that level of satisfying melodicism across the board that they nail in their best moments. I will say, it took Edguy some time to figure that one out as well so there’s hope for the future. At this point it’s one of the most listened to new albums of this year just by virtue of that heady nostalgia rush its dragging in its wake. Finally on the extreme metal front we have Finnish melodic death metal Deadvoid Inc, with their debut album Chapters, and its built on equal parts Swallow the Sun / Amorphis style melodic death but with a noticeable splash of Gothenburg musicality, particularly in its usage of clean guitar parts. Its a compelling listen, and vocalist Jonne Saarinen is both a talented screamer and pretty good clean vocalist, but guitarist Tuomas Torikka kinda steals the show here with his guitarwork. I know a guitarist whose main influence is Jesper Stromblad when I hear one, and Torikka clearly pays homage to the Swedish living legend with some very classic In Flames-ian lead melodies and clean passages. That ear candy is part of the reason I’ve been coming back to this album repeatedly, even though the songwriting overall could be tighter… I’ll give them a debut album pass on that front, surely they will grow into their own.
The last one I’ll mention is that it was an unexpected delight to have For My Pain… back again with Buried Blue after twenty years of thinking it was a one off project, and seemingly picking up right where they left off with that particularly Finnish strain of gothic metal that I’ve missed so much. No Tuomas Holopainen this time around, he’s been busy doing some other band, but Troy Donockley makes a guest appearance oddly enough and it’s actually a stellar tune in it’s own right (“Windows Are Weeping”), a marriage of gothic romance and Celtic folk stylings. But its that familiar, keyboard infused gothic metal sound in “Child of the Fallen” and “Time Will Heal Our Wounds” that bring me back to the icy soundscapes of contemporaries of the band’s debut such as Sentenced and Charon — a familiar, comforting sound as strange as it is to describe it that way. I was caught off guard with this album, not having heard any mention of a reunion until recently, so this is easily the biggest surprise of the year so far, and perhaps the album with the most potential to linger long into the year as we continue on. Speaking of which, I’ll wrap it up here… I was going to discuss some of the disappointing albums of 2026 so far, but eh, everything else around us is downright crap at the moment with the state of things, so maybe its better to just stick to the meager positivity we can scrape up. C’mon metal, get it together, you have nine months left to turn things around!
