Indian trad metal trailblazers Kryptos return to the fray in 2021 with a new album, Force of Danger, and I’m glad to report that it’s very much business as usual for the band.

If you’re familiar with the band’s output over their last brace of albums, 2016’s Burn Up The Night and Afterburner from 2019, the band’s mix of serpentine, gutter-level vocals and crunchy, eighties-inspired riffage is all present and correct. If you’re new to the band then, congratulations – you’ve made the right choice in investigating these lads…

Seemingly invigorated by the addition of new drummer Vijit Singh, the band reach new levels of confidence and power on album standout cuts Hot Wire and Thunderchild; the band’s mix of hair metal melodic sensibility and the crunching Teutonic heft imbued in Nolan Lewis‘s vocal approach once more hits paydirt on these tracks, which again will remind listeners who were around in the late nineties of the criminally underrated Gandalf from Finland, albeit at a slightly lower level of intensity…

Lewis is undoubtedly the ace in the Kryptos pack, and he delivers some of the most assured performances of his career on Force of Danger; add to this his six string partnership with excellent lead guitarist Rohit Chaturvedi and you have a musician who is surely approaching the peak of his game.

Naysayers may highlight the fact that Kryptos don’t seek to develop their sound overmuch now they’ve found what they consider to be their niche, but when you can churn out heavy metal of the quality of the afore-mentioned Thunderchild there seems to be little or no point in tampering with a winning formula. This is trad metal, after all…

It’s been a strong year so far for bands ploughing this particular musical furrow, and pleasingly many of the leading contenders for the trad metal crown in 2021 aren’t emerging from the usual territories; Will Kryptos still be near the top of the tree come year’s end? I couldn’t possibly say, but it’s going to take some mighty fine work from somebody, somewhere to knock them off their perch…

Force of Danger releases on October 1st.