Metal Gods

Metal Gods is Dream Evil’s seventh studio album, released on 26 July 2024 and their first since Six in 2017. The Japanese pressing, on Sony Music Labels, carries sleeve notes, lyrics and translations and adds a bonus track for eleven in all, about forty-five minutes (JAN 4547366687361); the international CD on Century Media (19802812302) holds ten tracks and runs about forty-one. The record was made at Studio Fredman by Fredrik Nordström, the band’s guitarist and producer, who both recorded and mixed it. He has said that he always tries to keep variety on a Dream Evil album, and that this one has fighting as its subject — something the titles themselves carry, from the opener through ‘Chosen Force’ and ‘The Tyrant Dies at Dawn’. Three guests play lead guitar. Jonatan Thörnpenberg of The Unguided appears on ‘The Tyrant Dies at Dawn’, Tommy Johansson, formerly of Sabaton, on ‘Masters of Arms’, and Christopher Amott, formerly of Arch Enemy and Dark Tranquillity, on ‘Born in Hell’. ‘Fight for Glory’, the Japanese bonus track, precedes the closing ‘Y.A.N.A.’.