Review Summary: Mom: We have Firepower at home
It’s downright impossible to talk about the first album from KK’s Priest without comparing it to guitarist/bandleader KK Downing’s alma mater. The classic metal revivalist style is right in line with what the “real” Priest has been doing lately and the band courted a couple other former members to make the rebound status even more blatant, drummer Les Binks having since stepped down due to injury but retaining Tim “The Other Guy” Owens on vocals. It also doesn’t help that Downing himself keeps encouraging this perception, spending more time in interviews airing out his grievances and longing than he does highlighting KK’s Priest as its own distinct entity.
On the surface, Sermons of The Sinner does a serviceable job of emulating that classic Priest spirit and even presents itself as a more aggressive alternative at times. While the production is considerably polished with everything drenched in reverb, the actual performances have an unhinged demeanor. The guitars flail about excitedly with furious sweeps and dramatically held out harmonic chords accompanied by Cage drummer Sean Elg’s consistent precision and bassist Tony Newton may even be more prominent than Ian Hill. Owens also continues to carry himself as Halford’s more feral doppelganger, putting in plenty of melody though spending most of his time in his signature shriek.
I’ll even concede that the first couple songs are actually pretty tight. “Hellfire Thunderbolt” may have felt like an odd single choice with a title ripped straight from a Stock Metal Lyric Generator, but it makes a bit more sense when it’s building off the intro’s cheesy ambiance. The title track is easily the strongest song of the lot, triggering flashbacks to the albums that Owens recorded with Yngwie Malmsteen, while “Sacerdote y Diablo” gets in some entertainingly goofy storytelling.
Unfortunately, the rest of the album doesn’t fare quite as well. “Raise Your Fists” and “Brothers of the Road” are decent enough songs that end up groan-inducing due to a series of paint by numbers true metal-isms that really don’t add to the musicians’ collective legacies, ultimately making their self-congratulatory attitude feel insincere and unearned. From there, “Wild and Free” just comes off as slapdash while “Metal Through and Through” and the closing “Return of The Sentinel” really drag the album down due to their sluggish pacing and excessive runtimes. The latter being an attempted sequel to what many fans consider to be one of the most intense, intricate Judas Priest songs ever made makes this especially egregious.
Overall, Sermons of The Sinner isn’t a terrible album but rather a decent one betrayed by faulty pacing and transparently desperate pandering. It feels like the sort of music tailor made for aging metal dudes with very strong opinions on Black Lives Matter to put on, yell “Hell yeah, metal’s not dead!” to their friends, and then never actually listen to it again. It’s nice to see KK back at it and these musicians have certainly crafted worse efforts than this (Never forget The Three Tremors). What you see is what you get but even if you just want meat and potatoes heavy metal, bands like Traveler, Crystal Viper, and even Judas Priest themselves are doing so with far less baggage and cynicism.
Highlights:
“Hellfire Thunderbolt”
“Sermons of the Sinner”
“Sacerdote y Diablo”
