Instead of using a guitar or even the tried-and-true Manly Men of Metal Choir, Majesty decided to completely torpedo the song by foisting the task of performing the melody on a children’s choir. The biggest travesty on Generation Steel is “Children of the Dark” because it had the chance to soar to the astounding heights of “pretty okay” on the relative strength of the melody comprising its chorus. Remember those bad Manowar and Saxon songs that show up now and again only to be skipped over every time they’d come up on the record? Generation Steel is that for an entire album. Tarek “Metal Son” Maghary’s vocals contributed greatly to my discontent, as he sounds like a mediocre Eric Adams impersonator phoning it in throughout the record, further burying the songs underneath even more blandness and irritation. The unfittingly titled “War for Metal” limps into battle on tired third-tier Manowar and Saxon riffage, inspiring yawns instead of battle cries, while “Rulers of the World” falls flat on its face with an impotent major key chorus that’s rivaled by Journey in heaviness and blown out of the water by Journey in catchiness. The vast majority of the album plods along at a horribly lackadaisical pace, as for some unknown reason Majesty insists on pursuing this direction relentlessly. The biggest issue plaguing Majesty is that Generation Steel isn’t just boring, it’s aggressively boring. This is further exacerbated by a grating key change at the song’s end that simultaneously neuters and ruins the entire song in one fell swoop. “Circle of Rage” has a good solo too, but the surrounding song sounds like a mash-up of Manowar and a slowed-down Dragonforce that nobody asked for, lacking the hooky and energetic aspects of both bands. The problem here is that much like the rest of the album, this song is basically bland Manowar worship to the point of near emulation and nowhere close to necessary listening. “Knights of the Empire” mercifully flirts with a bit more speed than the rest of the album, and builds up to an okay chorus and is later improved by an admittedly decent solo.
I’ve been as optimistic as possible and listened to this more than any sane man should, but there are very few legitimate redeeming factors that save Generation Steel from being pure, unadulterated metal failure.
After dozens of spins and hours of listening, I’m convinced the band must’ve thought of these genre attributes, promptly uttered “fuck all of that,” and then proceeded to write and record their seventh full-length, Generation Steel. What makes old-school swords-and-steel heavy metal great? Is it the loveable cheesiness, the huge riffs we all remember years down the line, or the almost tangible energy that inspires us to headbang, shout along, and makes us feel alive? Yes, but not for German heavy metal act Majesty.
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