review by: Roberto Martinelli

Agent Steel’s latest album is a thrilling mix of a bit of Iron Maiden, a bit of Judas Priest, and a whole lot of Forbidden. In fact, I’ll go on record and say that Order of the Illuminati is just as good as Forbidden’s classic Twisted into Form; and for all the same reasons.

Like Forbidden, Agent Steel is a killer mix of the best of thrash and American power metal (with Agent Steel being heavier on the power metal side). So you’ll get a lot of tasty, aggro drum chops and riffs, and soaring vocals. And the vocals are fabulous. But even the vocals and rhythm chops aren’t as good as the guitar leads, which are as good as any you’ll have heard this year. Seriously.

But good songs take more than just musical skill (take for example some of the power metal bands reviewed in this issue who can play but can’t write an engaging song to save their lives). And Order of the Illuminati has 10 great songs. That’s 100 percent of the track list, by the way.

In fact, the songs even seem to get better and better. And Agent Steel know better than to stick in some vomit inducing, sappy ballad like about all the power metal bands from Europe (or even the US) do. These ballads are almost always embarassingly terrible: so far away from anything remotely metal, the songs break up the pace of the album that was built by the equally cookie cutter fast songs. After you become familiar with some of these records, you listen to them knowing that just around the corner the singer is going to talk about autumn leaves falling over music with little to no drums. And you dread it.

And Agent Steel doesn’t commit the error of just making everything fast, either. No, the songs have a variety of pace and urgency, but the underlying trait is that they all rule. They make you look forward to the next song. And when the album is over, you look forward to hearing all the tracks over again. In order. Without skipping. Don’t you dare skip over this disk. (9.2/10)