If you love heavy metal in it’s purest essence – and why wouldn’t you? – then I humbly beseech you to lend an ear to New Horizons, the latest album from Slovenian up-and-comers SkyEye.

Why? Because in simple terms, it represents the purest distillation of the very soul of the music we love so much to have emerged, wrought by the hand of people who weren’t around in the glory days of the genre, for a very, very long time. Certainly since the early days of HammerFall, anyway.

But this isn’t just an exercise in hailing the old Gods, an ironic post-modern parody or, perish the thought, a cynical attempt to wrench cash from the pockets of that large section of metal society gripped by a nostalgic funk, only able to look back and never forward. No, SkyEye, despite their glorious flashes of Helloween-styled inspiration, are very much a ‘now’ band.

These men know what it takes to make the lip tremble, the fingers twitch and the neck flex. Because, like us, they are fans above all, they know what they – and, by extension we – want to hear from a ‘trad metal’ band in 2024. And my word they deliver just that across the course of eleven glorious slabs of unreconstructed heavy metal thunder.

Many have tried to do this before, and many of those that have tried have failed because their vocalist couldn’t live with what has gone before; In Jan Leščanec SkyEye have a man who will never let the side down; The possessor of a fine voice pitched somewhere between primetime Kiske and Dickinson, he handles all the material here with the sort of skill and aplomb that marks him out as a real contender. But, as well we know, the phone book is still just the phone book whoever happens to be singing from it’s lists; Luckily SkyEye have given Leščanec a set of songs more than worthy of his prodigious talent, and he puts his stamp on them in emphatic style throughout.The way that he holds the klistener’s attention through the full eigh minutes of the epic Saraswati is truly masterful

He can’t do it on his own of course, and the instrumental portion of the band acquit themselves just as well throughout, whatever flavour of metal they happen to be purveying. Bassist Primož Lovšin and Jurij Nograšek (drums) make for an effective engine room, solid but with a flairful edge, whilst Mare Kavčnik and new recruit Urban Železnik keep things taut and economical in the six string department, keeping flash to a minimum but delivering high-impact contributions throughout nonetheless. The result is, as noted above, a thoroughly enjoyable, joyful listening experience.

Are SkyEye the new metal Messiahs? I hope so. But even if they aren’t, the future of ‘our kind of music’ would appear to be assured for as long as these guys are in the game. Hail and Kill!

New Horizons releases On July 19th