Cellador - Off The Grid

Published March 06 2017

*=Staff's pick	Sole Survivors* Break Heresy Shadowfold* Wake Up The Tyrant Off The Grid Swallow Your Pride* Shimmering Status* Good Enough This Means War Running Riot

Genre	Power Metal	Chris Petersen	Vocals
Tracks	10	Chris Petersen	Guitar
Running time	42 Min.	-	Guitar
Label	Scarlet Records	James Pickett	Bass
Release	March 10, 2017	Nick McCallister	Drums
Country	USA	Diego Valadez	Keyboard
Producer	Chris Petersen
Similar bands	DragonForce

Japanese street date: February 22nd 2017.

With an almost completely changed lineup behind him Chris Petersen comes out with a new Cellador record. This outfit truly doesn't release albums frequently and its two previous official efforts, the debut Enter Deception and the 4-song Honor Forth EP were out in 2006 and 2011 respectively.

Everything is far from brand new on this album though, because the major part of it was recorded in 2015 and three of the tracks, Break Heresy and the two top songs, Sole Survivors and Swallow Your Pride, are reworked versions of previously digitally released material, which I believe wasn't really noticed by the masses at that point and certainly not by me, but nevertheless do they fit the basic prescription to the extent that I wouldn't have known about the original demos of the songs if I hadn't been given information about their existence.

This record comprises speedy and melodic power metal in the vein of DragonForce, but with a little bit fewer extremely fast parts and without the video game influence. The songs are for the most part really catchy with nice vocal melodies on a speedy foundation and thereby contains pretty much all the necessary elements to come out valid within this type of music. Sometimes it actually doesn't have to be too overworked to put forth some good music and, without being condescending, the formula on this record is in fact pretty simple with speed and melody as the main components.

Off The Grid is definitely worth checking out for the fan that prefers the speedier and the more energetic side of power metal and it's arguably one of the better records of its kind in quite a while. This specific genre has without a doubt been on a down for a few years by now, but Cellador shows that there's still some significant material to extract and perhaps this is one of the records that's strong enough in the end to start some kind of revival for the whole category of power metal music.

Performance	Originality	Production	Vocals	Songwriting
6	5	7	7	7

Summary
7 chalices of 10 - Tobbe