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ACID BLADE
Power Drive

Jawbreaker / Personal (2022)
Rating: 6/10

In 2019 I stumbled across a nice little self-titled demo from a German band named Angel Blade. It was a sizzling New Wave Of British Heavy Metal-inspired three-track affair that left me gagging for more. Little did I realise that Angel Blade, within a year or so, had become Acid Blade, so in a sense they slipped off my radar for a short while.

Acid Blade released a debut demo in 2021, and now we have this full-length record. Vocalist Klay Mensana and guitarist Luke Lethal both featured for Angel Blade and are joined here by guitarist Alvin Goreman, bassist Sci-Man, and drummer Erik Nukem.

Power Dive, adorned in garish purple-patched sleeve, offers 40 minutes of music which for the most part toys with those galloping-cum-speedy dashes you’d expect from modern day NOWBHM worship. What is immediate from the off on opener ‘Hot Bloods On The Loose’ is that this opus pretty much follows on not just from the 2021 demo but also from Angel Blade with the intriguingly high vocal warbles of Mensana and those infectious razor riffs.

This is straight down the middle metal with blazing solos and hard racing drums, but the vocals do start to grate after just a few tracks. ‘Ablaze At Midnight’ has a classic British feel to its steel and the title track builds well, as does the fiery ‘King Killer’ and the darker edged ‘The Tomb Of Khentika Ikheki’. However, there’s not really a song here that provides that extra spark, even though it is a solid eight-track opus.

When you immerse yourself in an experience such as ‘Into The Light’ you could literally have stepped into a mid-80s Euro metal time machine where countless bands were delivering similarly moderate metal that you were pleased to own but rarely played.

Power Drive can at times sound reaching in its delivery and musically it rattles, but this isn’t the blitz I was expecting, which was more apparent when they appeared under their original moniker. So, this is more tepid blade rather than anything remotely acidic.

Neil Arnold

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