Review by Vladimir on January 13, 2024.

Some months ago, a friend of mine showed me a music video for a song called 'Running For Your Love (Tonight)' by the heavy/speed metal band Savaged from Barcelona, Spain. That song succeeded at grabbing my attention, and attracting more interest in checking out these guys. Luckily, it has come to my knowledge that the band is set to release their first full-length album Night Stealer on January 26th, 2024 via No Remorse Records, so I guess the time was right as any to give these sweet heavy metal tunes a listen. 

Savaged provides a plethora of powerful heavy/speed metal tunes with catchy riffing backed up with plenty of mid-tempo or double-bass drumming, high pitched singing vocals and epic backing vocals during choruses that elevate the mood on the song. They also throw in a bit of thrashier moments on this album, that being the third track 'Knights Of Metal' which is a standard thrash metal tune with a bit of guitar melody to spice it up. There is but one interlude between songs, that being the fourth track 'Welcome To' which transitions into the next track 'Elm Street' (basically making it “Welcome To Elm Street”), with it obviously being a Nightmare on Elm Street themed song about Freddy Krueger. Although I expected it to be perhaps something a bit Dokken-ish in the style of “Dream Warriors”, it is nevertheless a fun and awesome rocking out heavy metal track that they included on this album, and it certainly does its job at pleasing an oldschool horror movie fan such as myself, especially since they included audio recordings from Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors. The epic backing vocals play a big part in their songs, the best examples being tunes like “Tons Of Leather” that really give the chorus so much power. The song in particular has an outro that reminds you a lot of the epic choir singing part on “Balls To The Wall” by Accept, which definitely served as one of the biggest influences on this song apart from their music in general. Other notable influences that can be traced on this album is the dual guitar soloing part on the sixth track 'Money Sucks' which sounds a bit like “Phantom Of The Opera” by Iron Maiden. 

From start to finish, it is straightforward heavy metal with a bit of speed metal here and there, which has a lot of catchy and melodic guitar work going on. The greatest strength of this album is that the songs have uplifting choruses, which is after all an essential heavy metal ingredient that should never be left out, and it certainly proves its worth on a couple of tracks that stand out like 'Knights Of Metal', 'Elm Street', 'Stealing The Night' and 'Running For Your Love (Tonight)'. The overall transition from one track to another is also smoothly carried out, which succeeds at helping the album end on a high note with the closing track 'Running For Your Love (Tonight)'. Although their music is obviously oriented towards that oldschool heavy metal from the 80’s, what truly manages to convey that energy along with the music is the awesome cover art that was done by Oldschool Crew. The production is also quite superb, which truly makes this one a very well balanced and polished sounding heavy metal album. 

This is one fun and exciting heavy metal album that really does a great job at entertaining you with every next tune that plays out. It is difficult to find any kind of flaw on this album since it really is a banger all the way through, and Savaged obviously had a goal to make this one rock out for the fans of NWOTHM. In case you heard of these guys but you never managed to give them a listen, check out their upcoming album Night Stealer on January 26th.

Rating: 8.5 out of 10