ARMORED SAINT – Raising Fear [Metal Blade Records Digipak Reissue 2022] HQ

Surviving a career spanning four decades, ARMORED SAINT has delivered their brand of uncompromising and passionate melodic metal with charging guitar leads and a propulsive rhythm section with valiance. The Los Angeles veterans are now releasing three of their out-of-print classic titles – 1984′s March Of The Saint, 1985′s Delirious Nomad, and 1987′s Raising Fear (which includes the previously unreleased track “Crisis Of Life” for the first time on vinyl). Originally released on Chrysalis Records, ARMORED SAINT returned to their label home of Metal Blade Records (which released their debut EP in 1983) to finally give these highly sought-after albums a proper CD / vinyl release.
None can beat the Rock Candy remasters of 1984′s March Of The Saint and 1985′s Delirious Nomad. We recommend these. However this 2022 Metal Blade reissue of ”Raising Fear” features their own Nineties remastering job, and it really sounds meaty.

Armored Saint have always been a band to go against the grain, when the world was obsessed with thrash and glam metal in 1987, Armored Saint were kickin’ it back old-school as the band released ‘Raising Fear’.
On this 3rd album the band play traditional metal and while they obviously sound influenced by what was going on in the UK in the early 80s, they also manage to take the influences and make them their own, such that the music doesn’t sound extremely European.

This kind of traditional sound was somewhat uncommon in the US at the time, as most metal bands either leaned toward poppier, more mainstream sounds or did the exact opposite and went digging for the fastest, heaviest, darkest, most extreme sounds they could.
While this album never shows any leanings toward the former, they do show the same sort of melodic metal tendencies as earlier NWOBHM bands on songs such as the title track and ‘Chemical Euphoria’.

The songwriting is strong. The riffs are pretty great and never seem too repetitive or boring. The solos are electrifying and fit the songs really well.
The vocals, as per the John Bush standard, are excellent. It’s easy to see why other bands wanted him at the time – including Metallica. His voice is strong, confident, and, while it may not be the widest-ranging and most operatic, has the sort of grit that you can only dream of having in this kind of old-school, traditional metal environment.

And the band aren’t one-trick ponies either. Not only can they speed up, they can also slow down. And not only can they slow down, they can get downright somber, like on ‘Isolation’, a great track about, well, isolation. And they sound good doing it, just as they sound good on the more energetic and frantic songs.
One of the tracks, ‘Saturday Night Special’, is a Lynyrd Skynyrd cover. Rather than simply redoing the song in its original arrangement and style with harder guitars, the band does a complete makeover to fit their style better.

It might have been some time since ‘Raising Fear’ was reissued, but this year has Metal Blade Records reissuing ‘Raising Fear’ on digipak CD as well as vinyl for the first time in years.
Excellent vocals, great riffs, awesome solos, and a capable rhythm section make this a very good piece of US metal.
Highly Recommended

01 – Raising Fear
02 – Saturday Night Special
03 – Out on a Limb
04 – Isolation
05 – Chemical Euphoria
06 – Crisis of Life
07 – Frozen Will / Legacy
08 – Human Vulture
09 – Book of Blood
10 – Terror
11 – Underdogs

John Bush – Vocals
Dave Prichard (R.I.P. 1990) – Guitars
Joey Vera – Bass, Bbacking vocals
Gonzo Sandoval – Drums

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