American Idol alumnus James Durbin is back with another collection of pleasant metal for the masses…

That’s the plan, of course, but for some reason Durbin – surely one of the most assured, and, let’s face it, technically accomplished, heavy metal singers on the face of our benighted planet at the moment – never seems to quite click with the listening audience en masse. Which is a great shame, because on We Are The Fire, his latest outing under the Cleanbreak banner, he once again comes up with some incredibly listenable heavy metal thunder.

At times the parts are working better than the sum, and Durbin and guitarist Mike Flyntz are in top form throughout, even when the standard of the songs dips a little. But even when the lyrics clunk – and they do, more than once – the music rarely fails to hit home, with Durbin coming up with some truly inspiring vocal melodies. The big ballad Love Again, fuelled by some impressive orchestration from former Frontiers eminence grise Alessandro Del Vecchio and featuring Flyntz’ best solo work on the album, shows Durbin’s massive talent off to full, hair-raising effect, but the best track here, the utterly marvellous Deal With Yourself, goes beyond even these high standards and is, quite possibly, the best thing Durbin has committed to wax thus far in his career.

Put simply, had Deal With Yourself been released in 1986, it would now be hailed as a trad metal classic, but it wasn’t, so it won’t, further adding to the suspicion that Durbin is indeed a man born out of time. Which is a shame, because he seems doomed to never quite reap the rewards his undoubted talent demands.

Still, that won’t matter to the small but committed bunch of headbangers, earthdogs, rivet heads, hell rats and metal maniacs that do appreciate the man’s skills, and when he launches into the Rage For Order-styled mayhem of Start To Breathe it’s hard to resist to urge to punch the air and bellow along with one of the most sincere men ever to pick up a mic for metal. He’s one of us, is James, and he deserves all the support we can give him. Hail!

We Are The Fire releases on October 11th.