ASTRAL DOORS – Of The Son And The Father

What can I say? Swedish Astral Doors doesn’t hide their influences, that’s for sure. Of the Son and the Father contains eleven songs who are all cut right out of the Black Sabbath / Rainbow / Dio tradition. Especially Dio. Very much Dio. Singer Patrik Johansson sounds from time to time so extremely close to Ronnie James Dio, that even Ronnie admirers like my self could have been fooled if I hadn’t known better. If e.g. the opening track, “Cloudbreaker,” had been put in between songs on a new Dio album I might not have noticed. It’s a bit hard to admit this, but it’s the truth.

The eleven tracks are all well meant metal with intentions to blow our brain out and fill the void with dragons and demons. The problem is that Ronnie James Dio himself is still releasing records and touring a lot. Me, I’ve heard the man live like five times in the last five years. He needs no replacement. And that’s what Astral Doors is; a Dio replacement. Or; a Dio tribute band with their own songs…

Here’s some of the titles: “Slay the Dragon” ( lyric: slay the dragon / kill the beast… ), “Burn down the Wheel,” “Rainbow on your Mind,” and “Man on the Rock” ( Not a mountain, by chance? In silver?). Anyone who knows Dio and Rainbow stuff will get my point here. If not, look at the cover: That’s priests hanging on crosses. The cover on Dio’s debut album pictured ONE suffering clergy, thrown by a beast into a sea to drown. Only one. So Astral Doors wins that race… they are young and hungry and have the capability to kill even more Christians on their cover sleeve…

So then. All this references to the world of Dio, do they make this record all stupid? In several ways YES! Pointless? Double yes! As said, these guys rocks, and they delivers, but there is no way EVER I’ll be able to listen to this record without thinking this is crazy close to the aforementioned metal patriarch. However, if all your Dio / Rainbow / Sabbath records are lost to the fire and there is no way you can get hold of new ones, this is the record for you.

If you never have listened to anyone of Astral Doors’ idols, and therefore not affected by the rip off effect, you might enjoy highlights on this album like “Cloudbreaker,” “Hungry People,” and “The Trojan Horse,” all tracks who strut of energy. ( Not mentioning the latter track’s keyboard solo, though… Poor piece… )

Less enjoyable moments are e.g. “Ocean of Sand” with a late 80s Deep Purple-ish riff, with Helloween-like bridges/choruses. Not good. The record then shows to be a dead end road as the three last songs fails to perform any kind of personalities at all.

Astral Doors sure rock, they sure heads for the hard, but someone else has already fond the gold at the end of the rainbow they are chasing.