Wizard
“Head of the Deceiver”
(SPV)
Wizard is a poor man’s Iron Maiden with a dash of a middle class worker drone’s Manowar and a sprinkling of a drunken spare changers German Power Metal (Rage, Helloween, Running Wild, etc) I think this real life Spinal Tap can best sum up what they’re all about in their own words taken from their song True Metal: “We play more metal than the most people can take/ We play metal for metal heads and not for punks and posers.” At least that’s as best I can understand from what is being sung in that high-pitched oh ever-so true metal scream. The album’s production is sharp and polished and oddly very heavy on the mid-range that makes the average vocals and silly lyrics ride up way to high in the mix. A touch more low end would’ve been useful to muddy up some of those passages where you can actually understand what the vocalist is saying and beef up and expand the frantic yet tick-ticking double bass. The album cover art is a poor variety of that Bruce guy’s stuff with muscle bound medieval warriors running bare-chested into battle, impaling heads on spears and holding their weapons aloft over their heads as to offer no defensive capabilities. If all Defenders Of Metal, as track five is called, defended metal in the fashion of the album cover warriors, then it would be no wonder why metal was taken out long ago by one small child with a pointy stick.
