I like this album, much more back to basics for the U.D.O. band (that if you don’t know by now after 14 albums, features former Accept singer Udo Dirkschneider). The previous two albums, “Rev Raptor” and “Dominator”, both had some really killer tunes, but focused more on these grinding machine-like riffs and colder production, see “Steelhammer” first single ‘Metal Machine”. “Steelhammer” though livens things up and nicely combines classic old school heavy metal Accept crunchy guitars on ‘Cry Of A Nation’ and ‘Basts Ya’ (sung in Spanish), and freight train rhythm section of “Thunderball” for the title track. Also, “Steelhammer” sees the return of the warmth full sound from the melodic U.D.O. 80’s spirited albums “Faceless World” (ballad ‘Heavy Rain’, ‘Never Cross My Way’, ‘Take My Medicine’), and the hard edged “Timebomb” on ‘Devil’s Bite’ which also recalls the greatness in arrangement of one of my favorite albums “Mastercutor”, a rampaging ‘Death Ride’, and the very tasty hook laden (also, cool effect on the guitars) ‘King Of Mean’ which seamlessly merges into the heavy hitter ‘Timekeeper’.

New guitarist Andrey Smirnov has a complimenting classic metal guitar sound for U.D.O. and flair to playing solos, see ‘King Of Mean’ and ‘Take My Medicine’. He’s a nice addition and I’m curious to see how he collaborates with Kasperi Heikkinen on second guitar who replaced Igor. Fourteen songs is a bit long but hard to find filler, could have shaved off maybe three, but ‘Book Of Faith’ is different moody closer begun by subtle percussion and Udo’s spoken words. Pretty cool.