Grand Magus‘ stoic refusal to move from ‘their’ lane is, of course, admirable. The adherence to a single style of music never hurt AC/DC or Status Quo, after all, and there’s something comforting as a fan knowing that you’re going to get exactly what you paid for the first time you take an album for a spin.

That’s certainly the case with the band’s new album, Sunraven, and you won’t hear any complaints from this corner of the Sentinel Daily Office; Songs about Norse-friendly subjects like Wolves and Ravens are the order of the day, as ever – even Beowulf‘s old chum, Grendel, gets a free transfer from Marillion to put in an appearance – with the result being another immensely pleasurable thirty five minutes in the company of JB Christofferson and company.

The first thing you notice is just how good the album sounds – huge, in fact, with every instrument given full reign to shine within the overall soundscape. Hour Of The Wolf and Grendel are particularly spectacular, with the latter featuring a splendid solo from JB, but the whole album is suffused with the sort of big production values that’ll take you straight back to the heart of the eighties and albums like Piece of Mind. Which is, of course, a very good thing.

The title track and Winter Storms, the epic fulcrum of the album, are also both highlights – and, as if to echo my sentiments expressed in the opening paragraph of this review, the latter of these two actually has a fair whiff of AC/DC about it’s intro –  but, as ever on a Grand Magus album, there are very few weak points to complain about. Most songs hit hard at mid pace, and all will prompt twitching of the extremities in extremis as the band beat their collective chests in remorseless style.

When Ludwig Witt‘s huge drums are joined by Christofferson and bassist Fox Skinner’s axes on closing track The End Belongs To You it’s impossible not to punch the air and start banging your head; this is the sort of out-of-body, uncontrollable response that only the best, most visceral heavy metal can prompt, and there is an awful lot of that present on this album. Magnificent!

Sunraven releases on October 18th.