Review: Sacred Outcry – Towers of Gold

Style: heavy metal, power metal (clean vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Lost Horizon, Atlantean Kodex
Review by: Andy
Country: Greece
Release date: 26 May, 2023

Daniel Heiman. For those of you who know, you don’t need to read the rest of the review. You’re sold and will blindly accept my 8/10. For those of you who haven’t heard power metal’s vocal equivalent to the addictive qualities of cocaine, the man is a living, breathing power metal GOD with a voice in a realm of its own. If power metal were Middle Earth (i.e. for nerds… which it’s not.), Heiman is the genre’s Gandalf–a fookin’ wizard with a mic. Do you want your album to automatically gain an, at minimum, +1/10 score bump? Reach out to this man. Everything he has ever touched has turned to gold… Towers of Gold.

Hellenic heavy metal warriors Sacred Outcry, now with a sophomore album under their belt, play exactly the type of heavy/power metal album that people who love the style will love, sounding similar to Greek contemporaries Triumpher and Warrior Path (who Heiman also sings for). Hefty guitar parts and energetic solos meet a galloping rhythm section, and all the while Heiman belts out lyrics where if you paused at any moment there’s a 95% chance the word is considered a textbook example of “epic.” What’s not to love? Really not much, but the lengthy penultimate title track, “Towers of Gold,” elucidates me to most of my misgivings. 

“Towers of Gold” is a bombastic song with several awesome movements, the most interesting melodic developments in the album, and some of Heiman’s best, classic AAAAAAAAAs (Einar isn’t the only one, prog-minded readers). Sexy moments fall one after another throughout the song, like at 2:30 when Heiman’s voice matches the guitar into the awesome sustained notes. But while the song is unabridged in its really stunning moments, the transitions are a bit lackluster: the classic problem with power and trad prog metal epics. Looking past that, though, the other nine tracks feel a tad less interesting. Sacred Outcry truly took a risk throwing so many cool ideas into one track, leaving the others to suffer a tad. 

In the rest of the album, the guitar parts, at their best, harmonize in a way that sounds quite Angra-esque, and, at their worst, they provide a solid background for Heiman to vocalize over. Sacred Outcry really does lean on Heiman a bit, but who can blame the band? He easily can make a merely competent performance instrumentally sound like a power metal album of the year contender single-handedly. The riffs, solos, and occasional flashes of bass all are pleasing and contribute, though, especially with the warm production job. The band frequently changes it up from speedier power metal tracks to slower songs like “The Sweet Wine of Betrayal” that border on epic doom. Sacred Outcry excels in each style–although trad heavy metal is their strongest with the weakest being cutesy little interludes like “A Midnight Reverie.” 

I know that I ought to discuss the actual music of Sacred Outcry more, but Daniel Heiman steals the show, and enjoyment of the album will directly correlate to how much of a fan of his you are. Any final remarks about Towers of Gold would all be about individual singing feats that Heiman has: a little thrown note here (5:17 in “Towers of Gold”) a huge, absurdly high-pitched scream there (4:30 in “Into the Storm” for a relatively restrained one that adds on some intriguing growly stuff near the end). You already know if you’ll like Sacred Outcry before hitting play, but I’ll be damned (for all time) if I can claim this is anything but near-perfectly executed.  

Recommended tracks: The Voyage, The Sweet Wine of Betrayal, Towers of Gold
You may also like: Warrior Path, Dimhav, Triumpher
Final verdict: 8/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | YouTube | Facebook | Instagram | Metal-Archives Page

Label: No Remorse Records – Bandcamp | Facebook | Official Website

Sacred Outcry is:
– Daniel Heiman (vocals)
– Steve Lado (guitars)
– George Apalodimas (bass)
– Defkalion Dimos (drums)