German speed metal maniacs Cruel Force have split their musical career into two distinctive parts. Formed in 2008, the band released two crushing albums in 2010 and 2011 respectively, both of which fell much more into the black/thrash category and were heavily influenced from early Bathory, Venom, Sodom or the Swedish Bewitched.
The band was inactive between 2013 and 2021, when, after the pandemic, they recruited the new bassist Spider and made a well-pronounced musical turn towards speed metal, almost entirely excluding early black-thrash, in favor of old school heavy metal with more melody, without sacrificing the aggression in the guitar work. The first album in this renewed direction was the excellent Dawn Of The Axe (2023), but now, with Haneda, Cruel Force have really stepped up their game and are dropping their best work so far.
The first thing to make impression is the absolutely amazing, total old-school beauty of an artwork, which just demands to own the album on vinyl. The middle-eastern flavor of the cover art is reproduced in the atmosphere of the opening intro The Cross, before Whips A Swinging totally obliterates the ears with top-class speed metal in the great tradition of Iron Angel, Ranger, or early Angel Dust. The solos and the velocity are insane, yet at 2:20 minutes, the band still manages to change the tempo and put a magical touch with some hard-rocking guitar licks. Savage Gods and Sword Of Iron are two consecutive stellar heavy-speed compositions, with a drastic leap in quality in all departments, in comparison to all previous albums. Never for even a minute the songs sounds familiar or tired, even if Cruel Force are swimming in waters thoroughly explored four decades ago. Crystal Skull is a fantastic, eastern-influenced instrumental breather, before Warlords continues the massacre, once again showing admirable compositional maturity, numerous tempo changes and a very cleverly paced chorus. Black Talon is another old school heavy metal masterpiece with its culmination being the otherworldly melodic solo starting at 2:30 – unbelievable!
Titan’s Awakening is a speeder in the vein of opener Whips A Swinging and I didn’t mention that so far, but this is nevertheless a good place to stress it: the production, mix and overall sound is very authentic and a nod towards the mid-to-late-Eighties, however, every instrument is heard crystal clear and not a single musical nuance is lost. The title track (I still can’t figure it out if this has something in common with the Tokyo airport Haneda or the Japanese history or this is a coincidence) is the logical culmination of this hammer of an album. More than 9 minutes long, it’s mostly fast in tempo, yet the guitar work is varied, masterful and the song has a quiet, melodic, atmospherically magical instrumental interlude midway, complete with another killer solo. The song ends with the theme and tempo it started with, repeating the chorus and closing the circle of amazing storytelling, sounding so cinematic and vivid.
Cruel Force have recorded a rulebook of old school speed metal with Haneda and an album which not only is on par with the beloved classics from the Eighties but often head and shoulders superior to the majority of them. This is an obligatory purchase for every classic metal fan and a guaranteed spot at the yearly top ten.
10/10
Haneda is out on March 27th and can be ordered from HERE
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