Keep of Kalessin Gets a Little Old School

Keep of Kalessin, whose last album was a part of this blog's top 10 albums of 2008, has released an edited stream of a track from their upcoming album. The track is making an early appearance because the band entered it into a portion of the Eurovision Song Contest, because Norwegians are just more metal than we are. Entitled "The Dragontower," the song has a taste of the chorale-sounding open chords that the band favored on Kolussus and Armada, but it's the two main riffs - the verse riff and its marching beat variation in the chorus - that really caught my ear: they're hooky and drenched in a vibe that feels distinctly NWOBHM. Keep of Kalessin have never shied away from lacing their music with a bit of prog, but while "The Dragontower" has some more traditional prog ideas, like the Queen-style acapella chorus in the bridge, writing a song that sounds like it might be at home in the Diamond Head catalog is an interesting musical step. After this taste, I'm more than a little curious to hear how the rest of the album sounds.