Genre: Heavy Metal
Country: U.S.A.
Label: High Roller Records
Year: 2022
I prefer the logic of corporate, joint or collective in my life and rather hate the Protestant meets capitalistic dogma of the power of the individual still when it comes to Arts then I can water my wine and see that what a single person can create by its own. One of this kind of persons is the Ohio-based Andrew D’Cagna. The multi-instrumentalist has been playing in more than six different bands over the years, while the most “famous” is the brilliant Icarus Witch. Ironflame is his personal project though, so we can hear a little bit more of his personality in it.
“Where Madness Dwells” is Ironflame’s fourth longplay album. Musically speaking you can’t see many differences between their albums. But we can hear less epic elements and more personal issues dealing in their lyrics making the album much more straightforward and down to Earth. Probably because as D’Cagna stated: “The biggest difference I wrote the album at the beginning of the pandemic. My best friend had just lost his battle with cancer and the country’s political climate was in a very volatile state.”
The remarkable thing is that once again Andrew D’Cagna has handled all the instruments himself, while he also sings -in a way that is easy to hear some parallels to the early work of Bruce Dickinson for Iron Maiden- on “Where Madness Dwells”.
Musically their sound is based on heavy -often lay flirting with thrash- guitars with melodic touches, thick bass lines, powerful drums (Andrew is the drummer in blackened bands Nechochwen and Obsequiae), driving rhythms, soaring choruses that stick to your mind -and reminding me some of Dio’s and Maiden’s glorious moments- and above all excellent songs.
Highlights: of “Everlasing Fire,” “Under the Spell,” “Kingdom of Lies”, “Under the Spell” and “Ready to Strike”.
