Release Date 25.09.2026
Format CD/LP
Genre Heavy Metal, NWOBHM
Origin United Kingdom
Cloven Hoof came out of Wolverhampton in 1979. The band was founded by bassist Lee Payne, the one name that has never left in close to five decades. They rose with the NWOBHM and released their self titled debut on Neat Records in 1984. They peaked at the end of that decade with "Dominator" and "A Sultan's Ransom", the two albums fronted by the late Russ North, the voice many of the band's followers hold above all others. Splits, reunions and a revolving door of singers followed.
Then Harry "The Tyrant" Conklin, the American frontman of Jag Panzer, the Colorado power metal institution behind "Ample Destruction", settled in Greece and took the mike for "Heathen Cross" in 2024. Guitarists Luke Hatton and Chris Coss and drummer Ash Baker have been in the ranks for over a decade, and this tenth studio album comes from the same line up, with Chris Dando on keyboards.
Chris Dando and Ben Fitzharris recorded it at Vault Studios in Kidderminster, and the sound is raw and warm. Patrick W. Engel mixed and mastered it at Temple Of Disharmony and puts Payne's bass up front where it belongs, rumbling under the twin guitars like a diesel engine. Baker's drums hit organic and dry, with no triggered click. Across some forty seven minutes the variety is real. "Terror From The Skies" opens at full gallop, "Gypsy Roller" and "The Bigger They Are" are hard rocking street metal with fists in the air, "Iron Mask" and the title track march at mid pace with the heft of a siege, and "Seven Sacred Wonders" closes on an epic scale with Dando's keyboards painting the backdrop.
Hatton and Coss trade leads and harmonise with the pedigree of the old British school, melodic and hooky, never showing off for its own sake. Conklin is the reason to stop whatever you are doing. Four decades after "Ample Destruction" he hits the high screams in "Conquistador" and "Phantom Chaser" with the same steel. On "Prodigal Son" he pulls back to a warm, almost preaching lower register that gives the biblical subject real gravity.
The lyrics roam through legend and history: Spanish invaders, the man behind the iron mask, the doomed ship sailing forever, a prophet unwelcome at home. It's pure heavy metal storytelling with no winks. The sound is traditional to the core, and nobody else sounds like Cloven Hoof with this singer, because Payne's bass lines and British melodic instinct meet an American power metal voice and the chemistry works. The running order swings between gallop and stomp with smart pacing. "Flying Dutchman" hammers its chorus one round too many and dulls a great subject. Proud British heavy metal, played with fire by a band in the middle of a second youth. Man, my best album of the year til now.
|9.0
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