review by: Roberto Martinelli

Heavy metal, and power metal in particular, has caused many a scoff through its male fixations on dragons and fantasy themes. I can’t blame people for laughing. It is totally absurd (but is it more absurd than singing about your baby?).

Perhaps the debate about what is more or less silly will wait for another day. The bigger problem is that you can totally tell that said metal bands generally have no connection to their lyrics about knights in armor and slaying dragons. Power metal music demands power metal cliché lyrics, and that’s what we’ll do, the bands think.

So when a band comes along and writes an entirely empassioned concept album about an obscure 70s science-fiction role playing game, people will snicker. But this has happened before with the albums of The Lord Weird Slough Feg. And, like before, just listening to the record makes you realize that as geeky as such an album seems on paper, you won’t hear lyrics delivered with as much conviction as the ones on Traveller.

When guitarist/vocalist/songwriter Mike Scalzi sings “release the spores,” you know he means it. Scalzi and co. are in their tenth year and on their fourth record now, having battled tepid interest from the majority of the metal world, and still are making the most original and BEST possible heavy metal available.

We’ve written about Slough Feg in the past (see the review of their reissued first album here), saying how it’s mind boggling that the metal faithful hasn’t embraced this band more. But it is how it is.

If you’re a returning Slough Feg lunatic, Traveller may seem inferior to the previous triumph, Down Among the Deadmen. While Down... does have more immediately catchy and memorable individual riffs, repeated listens to Traveller will reveal that it’s a grower. After eight spins of this quintessential disk, it becomes clear that this is Slough Feg’s best work to date.

Energetic, Celtically-inspired melodies and true metal harmonies and solos in the vein of Iron Maiden abound, fronted by the unmistakable lyrics of Scalzi, who is in his own right a grower. No note is wasted, and no passage is frivolous. It all fits in a glorious tribute to the power of originality and imagination, and is as truly and triumphantly metal as they come. Slough Feg and Lost Horizon (see next page) are in a bitter struggle for the best metal record of the year. There should be enough room on the podium for both of these totally original bands. (10/10)