Oh man have I been waiting to listen to this album. To put this in perspective, I was a huge fan of lead vocalist Amy Lee Carlson's previous band Substratum, who had some of the best modern metal anthems from a lot of new groups out of the last decade. However, with that band going south, Solicitor was born out of the ashes with a fierce demo that had me craving more. While Substratum had more hard rock and almost prog elements to some songs, Solicitor is pure speed metal with influences like Exciter, early Slayer and pretty much anything from the early to mid 1980's and it makes for a glorious time. This album in short manages to expand on that demo and even more.
The album starts of extremely strong with "Blood Revelations" absolutely ripping you apart with blistering leads and riffs at breakneck speed. The production is raw as hell but for this it works very well. Carlson's vocals are absolutely full of lethality with her unique high register and pure take no prisoners approach. Up next is "Betrayal" with a lot of melody in the vocals and some of my favorite riffing on the album. Track three, "The Red Queen" has a good build into some awesome melodic double guitar attack. This is definitely one of the most ambitious songs on the album with a bit of an early power metal feel that is built to be played live. This song especially shows the chops Solicitor has and they are firing on all cylinders. Up next is "Leather Streets" which has some strong NWOBHM influences with a heavy early Dianno era Maiden feel in the guitars. "Night Vision" opens with some nice extended acoustics going into full bore speed metal glory with again stellar songwriting. "Terminal Force" has a nice groove to it that continues the really good balance the band has with pure dirty speed and melodic hooks throughout. "Spectres of War" is another great tune that keeps things pretty straight forward but with the same energy the album has presented thus far. Finally, we end the album with "Grip of the Fist" fitting as much brutality in as possible with some nice blast beat rhythms bordering on early thrash, this is easily the heaviest tune on the album and a perfect bang to go out on.
For Solicitors debut, I expected nothing less than sure excellence. This album is Metal for metals sake pretty much and hits you from the first second and really never lets up. The songwriting abilities here are top notch as well. While the sound of the band may seem like familiar territory, they make it their own with a lot of nice twists especially in the middle of the album. The production also hits the mark with the raw feel but multi layered vocals and fluid instrumentation. You can tell a lot of care went into the album sonically. This is also pure riff heaven with a lot of shining examples. For sure Solicitor have come out swinging with another early contender for album of the year!
9/10
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