Poland’s Scream Maker are well established scenesters in their homeland, and with their transfer to mega label Frontiers Music they could well make the jump to international notoriety with new album BloodKing.

Resolutely traditional in approach, they ain’t afraid of overegging the pudding (this new album features a whopping fifteen tracks), but their overall sound – early eighties metal with a tweak of modernity via names like Primal Fear and the sort of melodic flourish Pretty Maids used to add to their heaviest material – is a winner and there’s an undoubted market for this stuff, so why not?

At it’s best, on radio-friendly cuts like When Our Fight Is Over, the winning nature of the material on offer is hard to deny. Had this track appeared on an eighties Queensrÿche album – Rage For Order, say – it would now be hailed as an all-time classic, and you have to say that the clever interplay between the vocals of Sebastian Stodolak and the superior guitar skills of Michał ‘Ajronmajk’ Wrona certainly has more than a whiff of greatness about it.

The out and out heavy stuff works just fine, too, though you get the sense that the band would make a bit more progress following their more melodic impulses; that said, when the quartet go for broke at the end of End Of The World, if your head isn’t at least nodding furiously in sympathy then you may well be listening to the wrong album…

The stadium-ready metal of the band’s eponymous anthem Scream Maker will have a huge smile on your face of you’re a metalhead of the right vintage – you might even find yourself absent-mindedly singing along, like me, the first time you hear it, always a good sign – and Wrona’s solo will have your fingers twitching in approbation whilst you head to the loft in search of that old cardboard guitar you haven’t seen in years. Great classic metal has the power to induce that sort of ridiculous behaviour in grown adults, and, make no mistake, there is some great heavy metal on this album. With a little attention to the idea that less is more, this might well have been one of the albums of 2022 in it’s field, but, even as is, it’s a must hear if you love giving the neighbours a reminder of what great heavy metal sounds like…

BloodKing is out now.