Doro - Forever Warriors, Forever United

I can’t hate Doro, in fact I quite respect the hussle and dedication she’s had to this genre and how she’s given so much of herself to her music, and for the incredible amount of time she has done so. But I can’t way I was excited at the prospect of a double album from her spanning nearly a hundred minutes in length. I just don’t really think Doro’s formulaic brand of old-school heavy metal has the stamina to make it across two discs of material for a single album, and at such a late stage in her career. 

My anticipations were largely correct for this album. And while it’s not an offensively lazy or incompetent release, it’s nothing I would ever find myself listening to again, definitely not in full. There was not enough to justify such a massive slog of songs for this project, and I think at least 75% of the album should have been trimmed and honed, if not cut completely.

I will give the album credit where it is due first. Doro’s voice is still on point after all these years and she still hits some impressive high notes. The instrumental parts of the songs, even if they aren’t composed all that interestingly, are performed adequately and certainly channel that old-school metal vibe in more ways than one so that at least the whole thing isn’t super homogeneous, because I would really have hated an hour and forty minutes of the same damn kind of song. And that life-saving diversity, as mild as it is, on this album is what allows for a few highlight tracks to stick out, one of which being “Turn It Up”, a hard-rocking and energetic track full of the kind of vibrant attitude that made Doro so captivating at her best. Helge Schneider’s saxophone contribution on “Backstage to Heaven” is fitting for the song style and provides a vital spice to the album at its place, even if the rest of the song is average at best. The strings on “Black Ballad” are another cool instrumental addition and the subtlety of the percussion underneath it is very tasteful. It’s a song though, where Doro’s repetitive vocals and lyrics are the weakest parts of it. “Fight Through the Fire” also stands out as significantly more crunchy than the rest of the album as well. The album’s highlight ballad does show up in the form of “Lift Me Up”, which sounds like it might be a bit inspired by the instrumentals of early 2000′s alternative metal. It’s probably the most emotive performance on the whole album.

But, the album’s weaknesses do still outweigh its moments of quality. The songs do still fall into a few distinct and predictable categories pretty much unanimously, which takes away for the thrill an album like this should maintain. The basic sentimental lyricism is rather corny and not in a way that adds to the appeal of the album; it’s just amateurish lyricism that characterized metal’s early days, which the genre has largely moved on from. But the album falters most in the compositional department, with not nearly enough in the way of interesting ideas to justify the length across the twenty-five tracks. I’m not expecting some genre-defying avant garde experimentation, there just needed to be tighter songwriting on an album like this, because that was the crux of classic heavy metal back in the early 80′s, and that’s what shot Priest and Maiden to fame. So many songs on here, as much as I’m sure Doro did put a fair amount of effort into, don’t sound complete enough. For the few featured musicians brought onto the project, it still doesn’t feel like they make enough of a positive impact, and it feels like the album still needs to bring in more outside help to breathe some energy into it (which is not a great feeling to have about an album). The Johan Hegg feature is kind of wasted on the repetitive love song “If I Can’t Have You - No One Will”, and Doug Aldrich’s talents are similarly underused on “Heartbroken”. The ballads are by far the worst category of songs on the album; songs like “It Cuts So Deep”, “Soldier of Metal”, and “Love’s Gone to Hell” just drag on at painfully slow paces with none of the feeling they’re supposed to have.

Overall, it was just a really predictable stumble from the metal queen, like watching a dude announce that he’s about the perform a stunt he’s obviously not qualified for. I still respect Doro’s legacy as an early icon of heavy metal, but that also means not lowering the bar for her, and holding her to the same standards of acts like Judas Priest. While I highly doubt Doro will be reinventing herself any time soon, if ever, it would have been nice to hear something unique to her discography to liven this album, and if she is going to stick to this vintage sound, she needs to focus on making it as thoroughly as possible because an hour and a half of filler is not going to accomplish what she wants.