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| STALLION - From the Dead LP | |
HRR 559, ltd 1000, 150 x transparent ultra clear (HRR mailorder), 450 x transparent blood red + 400 x black vinyl, gatefold cover, poster, insert, 2nd pressing: ltd 500, 100 x black, 150 x neon orange + 250 x red/ black splatter vinyl, gatefold cover, insert | |
| Pauly - Vocals Äxxl - Guitars Oli - Guitars Niki - Bass Aaron - Drums | |
| 01 Underground Society 02 Down and Out 03 Hold the Line 04 Waiting For A Sign 05 From the Dead 06 Kill Fascists 07 Lord of the Trenches 08 Blackbox 09 Step Aside 10 Awaken the Night | |
| 1st pressing SOLD OUT! 2nd pressing: AVAILABLE | |
The future looks bright for Stallion. They are one of the most promising up and coming traditional heavy metal bands from Germany. The first pressing of the re-issue of their 2014 debut mini-album »Mounting The World« via High Roller Records sold out in no time. No wonder that they took the prestigious Keep It True festival by storm. With 2016’s »Rise And Ride« longplayer Stallion carried on where they have left off with »Mounting The World«. With their second album »From The Dead« it’s now time to show their fans that Stallion are willing to progress without leaving the path of traditional heavy metal...
And songs such as “Waiting For A Sign”, “Awaken The Night” and “Underground Society” show exactly that. Vocalist Paul, coming across on »From The Dead« as a cross between Cirith Ungol’s Tim Baker and Klaus Thiel of Germany’s Bullet, explains: “We took our time to work on the songs for the new album. We did not rush things for »From The Dead«. That’s maybe the biggest difference between our first and our second album. The songs evolved over time, and they changed as well. Some quite dramatically so. In addition to that it was more of a group effort this time around. Everybody in the band was involved a lot more in the actual songwriting process.”
So it is quite safe to say that overall »From The Dead« is a more mature album in comparison to »Rise And Ride«. There is no reason for Paul to disagree: “That’ for sure, yes. You could say that. With the mini-album, and »Rise And Ride« as well, we had nothing to lose. It was our aim to have a vinyl out and we did not care at all what the scene was thinking about it. I have to stress that this has not really changed with the new album. We still make the music we like. But of course our own quality control has become a lot stricter. So all in all, »From The Dead« might as well be considered a more ‘grown up’ album at the end of the day.”
As mentioned earlier, Paul’s charismatic vocals are one of the factors making Stallion sound pretty unique. For him this all comes very natural: “I don’t really reflect about how I am singing. This is my style. A style I have developed over the years, even in bands before Stallion. I do think that my style of singing fits quite well with the music Stallion is playing. I never copied singers of other bands, it just feels natural to me. And this is probably how it will stay, I can’t see myself changing my style of singing anytime soon.”
The most accessible number on »From The Dead« is probably the album closer “Awaken The Night”: Melodic metal at its very best! Paul explains: “From day one our style was very varied, ranging from speed metal, thrash metal and heavy metal to melodic hard rock. This is why we wanted to have a straight number on the new record as well. At the end of the song, there is some punky speed metal shredding going on, so this makes it a typical Stallion number after all.”
With songs such as “Underground Society” (and “Kill Fascists”) the lyrics of »From The Dead« are reflecting on how Stallion view what’s going on in the current metal scene. And it’s fair to say that there are some aspects they do not like at all: “»From The Dead« relates to tendencies within the metal scene to associate with extreme right-wing ideas and to toy with fascist symbols and iconography. Just for the sake of being extremely ‘evil’ and ‘true’, whatever that may mean. There is really no justification for following fascist ideologies. That’s a no no. And it doesn’t help proclaiming doing that purely for the sake of provocation. That doesn’t help at all. We also have a critical view regarding global politics right now. It may seem highly unlikely that people like Erdogan or Trump will ever listen to a Stallion album, I give you that, but maybe we can make metalheads think about what those politicians are doing to us. We probably won’t change the world. But at least we had our say.”
Matthias Mader