The beginning of every fresh year demands a balls-out heavy metal album like this one. Forged in hell by former Death/Iced Earth drummer Richard Christy, Charred Walls Of The Damned are that rare phenomenon: a metal super-group worthy of your attention. With a line-up completed by renowned producer (and exemplary six-string maestro) Jason Suecof, none-more-legendary bassist Steve DiGiorgio and the undisputed vocal brilliance of Tim ‘Ripper’ Owens, this is a thrilling prospect, even before a single note reaches your ears. But the startling and heartening reality is that this absolutely lives up to every expectation on a musical level. Pitched somewhere between the proudly classic and traditional metal style that Owens has specialised in throughout his career and the fervently progressive and highly evolved turbo-death metal that both Christy and DiGiorgio assimilated into their repertoires during their respective tenures as Chuck Schuldiner’s sidekicks, songs like thunderous opener ‘Ghost Town’ and the stately crunch of ‘Creating Our Machine’ hit the same exhilarating levels of heaviness and invention that fans of Nevermore accept as a base-level minimum, while also exhibiting enough old school bravado and melodic ferocity to appease those blind to anything released post-1990. The pairing of Christy and DiGiorgio is a particularly inspired touch; both are players that routinely eschew mindless precision in favour of a loose-limbed and rhythmically priapic approach that infuses something as seemingly straightforward and conservatively-structured as ‘Blood On Wood’ with a whole load of soulful swagger and rawness. Ultimately, this is a superb modern metal record with brains, balls and a strong enough identity to allay fears that Christy is simply blowing smoke up his own behind. Charred Walls Of The Damned sound like a real band, so that’s how they should be regarded. We can only hope that this is the start of something enduring and not just a one-off, because this – some truly appalling artwork aside – is a platinum-plated triumph.