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██▌ Artist...: Them ░▐██▌
░▐██ Album....: Fear City ░██▌░
▓▐██ Year.....: 2022 ▓▐██▓
▓▐██ Rel. Date: 2025-09-13 ░▐██▓
▐██ Genre....: Heavy Metal ██▌░
░ ██▌ Label....: Steamhammer ██▌
▐██ Source...: CD ▐██
░▐██▌ Type.....: Album ▐██▌░
▓▄████ Quality..: VBR, 44.1kHz, Joint Stereo ████▌░
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1. Excito 1:48
2. Flight of the Concorde 3:48
3. Welcome to Fear City 4:12
4. Retro 54 4:54
5. An Ear for the Action 0:29
6. Graffiti Park 4:06
7. 191st Street 5:30
8. Home Stretch 0:54
9. The Crossing of Hellgate Bridge 9:19
10. Death on the Downtown Metro 3:42
11. Stay Tuned... 0:23
12. A Most Violent Year 0:57
13. The Deconsecrated House of Sin 3:43
14. In the 11th Hour 3:17
47:02
Originally formed in 2008 by vocalist Troy as a King Diamond tribute
band, performing for three and a half years with over 20 shows including
performances with Mike Wead and Hal Patino from King Diamond. After
returning from several other projects, Troy started to create a concept
idea in 2014 and moulded a story, band, album and show around it.
The band name was inspired by the King Diamond album "Them".
---
Former King Diamond/Mercyful Fate tribute band turned spinoff homage
band Them has been a fairly steady presence for the past 7 years, since
their 2016 debut Sweet Hollow ushered in another outfit seeking to
revive the horror story approach to heavy metal during the extended
studio hiatus of both aforementioned iconic 80s trailblazers. Yet from
the beginning mastermind and lead vocalist of old time New York thrash
metal outfit Coldsteel, namely Troy Norr, has sought to distinguish his
latter day brainchild from the likes of Portrait, Attic, and In Solitude
by opting for a faster, thrashing variation on the older heavy metal
approach of yesteryear, all the while maintaining a clear horror
aesthetic by opting to have each album released under the Them moniker
in close proximity to Halloween. 2022's Fear City stands as the fourth
installment in Norr's ongoing conceptual storytelling vision, upping the
ante in nearly every respect while also bringing his one-eyed, ghoulish
and recurring protagonist into a very different time and place.
Set in what is assumedly the early 1980s in the crime-plagued streets of
The Big Apple based on the story bits provided via brief interludes, the
vengeful and neutrally aligned principle character KK has come back to
take vengeance upon the descendants of those who wronged him in the
past. As with prior installments of this saga, the musical content opts
for an extremely melodic and methodical structure that mirrors the
symmetry and dark aesthetic of King Diamond's seminal 1980s albums, then
proceeds to inject a heavy amount of neck-destroying thrash elements
that draw upon the more violent side of the Teutonic sound (think
Abigail meets Destruction's The Antichrist) and further increases the
technical factor. Norr's vocals tend to be less falsetto-happy then that
of King Diamond and mixes in a more gruff-driven element and a heighten
interplay of gang chorus elements, while the dueling guitar work of
Markus Ullrich and Markus Johansson land somewhere between LaRocque and
Malmsteen, further aided by a near equally busy showing by keyboardist
Richie Siebel.
The general order of the day for this LP is a foray of highly kinetic,
three to four minute long bangers that manage to pack in enough vocal
and guitar gymnastics to fit an ode of double the length, all the while
avoiding excess and being highly memorable despite the often rambling
lyrical narrative and theatrical atmosphere. The crazed riff work that
adorns the opening cruiser "Flight Of The Concorde" could almost be
mistaken for an amped up homage to Riot's "Thundersteel", while the
equally frenetic yet more bottom-heavy "Welcome To Fear City" often
flirts with death metal territory due to an utterly insane drum
performance by newly recruited Death Dealer and former Into Eternity
drummer Steve Bolognese. Blurring lead guitar passages and raging ghost
choirs permeate the extreme thrashing mayhem of "Death On The Downtown
Metro" and "The Deconsecrated House Of Sin", yet the song that manages
to steal the show is the towering 9 minute musical narrative "The
Crossing Of Hellgate Bridge", which hurls everything at the prospective
listener but the kitchen sink.
To date, this is the strongest and most advanced piece of conceptual
mastery to come out of the Them brand, and barring the production
getting a bit hazy at times due to the cacophony of melodies and
counter-melodies overlapping at key transition points while being
drenched in ultra-busy guitar and drum work, it's a perfect package that
takes all of the best elements of what King Diamond and Mercyful Fate
started and casts it in a new ominous light. It's sheer complexity gives
it a level of staying power that will more than carry this outfit's
audience through the next two years until a further chapter in KK's
seemingly unending quest for vengeance is revealed, and while the
voiceover segments have a dated and slightly corny character to them,
the twists in the story that come into focus are sure to keep every avid
following hooked. No matter what crafts his hypocritical adversaries
might devise, you just can't keep a good ghoul down, and KK's stories
will hopefully prove far from finished.
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