Sonic Firestorm

The second album came out first in Japan, on Victor on 24 March 2004, and the band's own site gives 11 May as its release on Noise Records. In early 2004 the band had made their first visit to Japan as the opening act on Helloween's Japanese tour, and this record followed straight after. It is the first album with bassist Adrian Lambert and drummer Dave Mackintosh, whose fast blast beats led the band to start calling their music "extreme power metal". It was recorded and mixed between 6 October and 10 December 2003 at Thin Ice Studios in Surrey, with every guitar part tracked at Herman Li's LamerLuser Studios in London, and produced by Karl Groom with the band. The album runs eight songs. The Japanese pressing added "Cry of the Brave" as a bonus track, and the 2010 reissue carried it too, along with a DVD that includes "Fury of the Storm" and "Fields of Despair" from the band's 2005 shows in Japan. "Fury of the Storm" later became a playable song in Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock.