Review by Vladimir on July 8, 2023.

What time is it? It’s Iron Maiden o’clock, but not really! Today I will be talking about a polish heavy metal band Ironbound from Rybnik and their debut full-length album The Lightbringer, released on April 30th, 2021 via Ossuary Records. Now you may be wondering why did I just say seconds ago that this is an Iron Maiden album, when it actually isn’t. Well, if you really want to find out, please stick with me on this journey and feel free to take a look at the band Ironbound and their debut album The Lightbringer. Up the Irons! Oh wait, UP THE IRONBOUNDS!

Music-wise, The Lightbringer deals in a very straightforward heavy metal approach in their riffs with occasional melodies and powerful guitar solos. You will notice that there are a lot of Iron Maiden-esque moments in their music, stretching from their songwriting with rocking and galloping guitar and bass riffs, all the way to the vocals which in terms of performance are very close to that of Blaze Bayley. Riff-wise they do have Iron Maiden moments in them, but they are not overly similar or done in a manner where a part of the song reminds you lot of a certain Maiden song or perhaps their every song, especially since you don’t have that well-known but also typical Iron Maiden guitar chord template which is E minor C major D major. What I think should also be pointed out are the guitar solos. Beside the occasional instances of Iron Maiden’s classical heavy metal guitar solo traits, they have moments when there’s a bit more neoclassical touch to them and don’t exactly remind you a lot of something that either Dave Murray, Adrian Smith or Janick Gers would have composed.

The entire song structure is very simple and to the point, and the best part is that no track on this album feels too long or stretched like Maiden have been doing their songs for a while now. The riffs are also well-placed in the song’s overall simple yet effective structure, without there ever being a moment when you thought that you could have added more riffs on top, which I think would have ruined the song or perhaps unnecessarily prolonged it. I highly respect the fact that there are still plenty of heavy metal bands out there that don’t take their songwriting way too seriously, which ultimately causes them to complicate their songs with too much substance for one to handle. Ironbound deserves to fall under the category of those bands that stick to the basic rule of “if it ain’t broken, don’t fix it”. The cover art by Mariusz Gandzel is a very solid representation for the entire album, which has a nice futuristic and science-fiction style to it that fits with the style of music. Production-wise it is very high quality but top-polished sound, with a nice and clean guitar tone, beautiful acoustic guitar sound on 'The Turn Of The Tide', along with the Steve Harris-like bass guitar tone and the vocals which successfully manage to stick out in this entire package.

Although I am genuinely uninspired to revisit Iron Maiden or check out some of the bands that were heavily influenced by their sound, Ironbound did a very good job on their album The Lightbringer, which on its own is an enjoyable experience. I am not sure if Ironbound should definitely stick to this formula or perhaps get out of the Iron Maiden comfort zone in order to craft their own sound, because the album in general really works and I can’t imagine if it would have worked out any other way. Whatever Ironbound does after this, I am sure that they won’t stray far off their established direction.

Rating: 8.1 out of 10