Italy’s Dwarven-themed Power metal stalwarts, Wind Rose is back with album number 7, following up 2022’s excellent Warfront, which in my opinion was the best thing they have released.

I’ve been a fan of the band since 2017s Stonehymn, where they really locked into the whole Dwarven metal persona, costumes, and themes.  Since then, they have been one of the consistently excellent power metal bands around, arguably peaking with the watershed cover song, “Diggy Diggy Hole” from 2019s Wintersaga.

Right off the bat, the album is the shortest the band has released coming in at 42 minutes, and it feels like the band has trimmed some fat and shortened the average length of the songs. But still at play is the band’s beefier take on keyboard-heavy, Power Metal, with a Dwarven girthy-ness , rather than a more wispy, elvish tone.  And it’s still catchy as hell, with eight hammer-swinging anthems befitting the halls of Khazad-dȗm in its glory days.

After the intro, the first track “Dance of the Axes”, is a perfect mood-setting opening number with a galloping pace and epic chorus. But it’s the next track “The Great Feast Underground” where the album really takes off with a boozy, raucous romp that Alestorm would be proud of.

Then the album hits a sort of familiar territory lull as the next few songs, are good Wind Rose songs, but there is definitely a drop-off from the opening two songs, and nothing quite gets the blood pumping. “Rock and Stone”, is a bit repetitive, and seems to have some all too familiar refrains and riffs from prior albums and songs. The same with “To Be A Dwarf” the title track and “Legacy of the Forge” but they are still pretty fun tracks. Just not next level, like every track on Warfront was.

Closer “No More Sorrow” finally gets back to truly superb songcraft with a moody, darker pace and gait, though not quite as somber as “Tomorrow Has Come” from Warfront. It shows the band can change things up just a bit (i.e there’s a different vocal pitch in the chorus), and be still effectively ‘Dwarven’.

Ultimately, despite a few good songs, Trollslayer is a bit of a drop of from Warfront, but still a solid Wind Rose album nonetheless.

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