Canada has produced a surprisingly large portion of good heavy metal over the decades, and Cauldron is just one of the newer entries to that pool. Their newest offering, “New Gods,” in addition to featuring some curiously chosen album art, brings its share of hooks and riffs. All of these blatantly harken back to a simpler time in metal’s history, which I enjoy, even if they aren’t the most engaging. On that note, this is as good a time as any to bring up a few qualms I have with this album as a whole, the first of which happens to be the one-dimensional guitar work and riff structure. Take the introduction riffs for “Letting Go” and “Save The Truth / Syracuse” as a perfect example of what I mean by lazy riff writing. Vocally, this album also falls short, with most of the choruses well-defined yet still packing little to no punch. Even the harmonies seem a little short-winded and bland. What this band offers isn’t something we haven’t heard many times before (which is a common theme with most of these “revivalist” bands, but I’ll save that rant for a later time). It’s a real tragedy too because some of the melodic ideas the band throws together here could have been a lot more memorable if they had executed it better, but as it is, it just comes off as second tier and derivative to some of the memorable acts of the 80s.

New Gods album cover. Photo from Amazon.

Band: Cauldron

Album:  New Gods

Genre: Heavy Metal