Virgin Steele

Act I

classic among classics

Review Score:

(10/10)
Virgin Steele had been around a long time, since the early eighties in fact. Little commercial success, and to be frank, not all that much artistic success either. Flashes of brilliance beginning with their album Noble Savage, to be sure, but never any sustained excellence.
And then, suddenly, David Defais and company dropped three atom bombs on the world of metal: this record, its follow-up, and their largely re-recorded greatest hits package, Hymns to Victory. Talk about "sustained excellence". There not only isn't a bad track on any of these three albums, there aren't even any average ones. Every single song (excepting only the ridiculous "Saturday Night" on Hymns, about which the less said the better) on all three of these albums -- and that's hours of music -- is simply as good as epic, symphonic, "true" or power metal get.
Then, just as suddenly, the quality of Virgin Steele's music went back to what it had been before: quite good here and there, but generally nothing special.
It doesn't seem like they ever did get a high level of commerical success, and their other albums are pretty much forgettable. It doesn't matter. We don't judge artists by their popularity nor by their worst works, we judge them by the aesthetic and spiritual quality of their greatest works. This record is one of the greatest albums in this genre you will ever hear. Along with its sequel and Hymns to Victory, it assures Virgin Steele of a legendary position in the history of metal, or at least among the elites it will. You must add it to your collection right away -- unless you're some kind of tasteless doofus, of course, in which case you likely wouldn't have found out about this one anyway.

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