"Hammer of the north" CD by Grand Magus

by Oliver Kube (08.07.2010) Mighty, monumental, epic. Still a trio, the Swedes treat us to an overwhelming listening experience: Heavy Rock with a tad of Doom and Stoner Rock stuff, the latter being not just a tradition for Grand Magus, but also due to "JB" Christoffersson’s odd job with the congenial Spiritual Beggars. And exactly that feat prevents the Scandinavians, with their basically very old-school tracks (à la Black Sabbath during their Dio era), from drifting into Manowar or Hammerfall waters. The only lame exception on this otherwise great album is the True Metal cliché thing "Northern star". Among the highlights of the ten tracks on this album #5: the galloping first song "I, the jury", the epic title track, "The lord of lies", a mixture of epic and groovy parts, and bluesy, multi-faceted "At midnight they get wise", on which Christoffersson delivers his most versatile and maybe even best vocal performance of his career so far..