Both opening riffs, the slower, clean one and the plodding distorted one were both fantastic and set the tone for the song perfectly.

I always love when Volbeat goes a little longer with their songs as it gives their awesome instrumentation more room to breathe. One of the longer tracks on the album, ‘The Sacred Stones’ is up next. It feels like a combination of ’16 Dollars’ and their cover of ‘Battleship Chains’, except for the fact that both of those are better than this track. Outside of the horrible key change for the last verse, there is little wrong with this song, other than the fact that the band has done this style so much recently, and done it better previously.

However, it’s their lighter, rockabilly side which simply isn’t what made me fall in love with the band in the first place. The sax solo is also awesome, I have to admit, and gives it a more party feel.

It’s catchy as anything, don’t get me wrong, it’ll be stuck in my head for the rest of the day. The song that made me apprehensive about the album from the moment it was released, ‘Wait a Minute my Girl’, is up next. It does still retain that newer, radio-friendly style chorus too, though. It reminds me a lot more of the Guitar Gangsters era more than anything from the last couple of albums. The bridge also being backed by some great guitar work. It’s not quite as catchy as some of their best tracks, but it’s still a good singalong track! We continue to get awesome, heavy riff after awesome, heavy riff throughout the track. It then builds up into a huge, open chorus. Michael Poulson’s powerful, low vocals soon come in over the top with an interesting, catchy melody through the verses. The band is immediately living up to their promise of going back to their heaviness again.

‘Temple of Ekur’ opens on a steady drumbeat before a couple of fantastic, thrash-esque guitar riffs come in over the top.

Reviw of new volbeat album