Powerglove - Saturday Morning Apocalypse Review

Ever been playing some classic NES and just thought "THIS COULD USE SOME FUCKING METAL!?!?" Chances are that you haven't. Wonder why you never thought of that? It's because you are stupid. In 2005 a few metalheads with a passion for classic video games were genius enough to start making their favorite 8-bit theme songs into power metal epics. Their first full-length, Metal Kombat For The Mortal Man, came out in 2007 and featured songs from Mario, Sonic, Mortal Kombat and many others. Since then the band has been rapidly gaining popularity and have toured with quite a few bands including Psychostick, Arsis, and even Dragonforce. But even with the success of Powerglove's first album, you had to wonder how long they could keep it up. I mean, there are only so many classic video game songs that would translate well into metal covers, and luckily Powerglove realized that. On "Saturday Morning Apocalypse," Powerglove have moved from covering songs from video games they loved as children to TV shows and Movies. But don't worry fans, you will still get the same kind of nostalgic feel from these epic covers.

To no surprise, Powerglove's music centers around the memorable melodies created by the theme songs they are covering. The melodies are always played beautifully with harmonized guitar leads and are usually backed by a chugging lower riff and some double bass heavy drumming. Many of the songs also have impressive solos and interesting bridges. All of these elements are nothing new to the metal genre, but Powerglove manages to execute them insanely well with songs that they shouldn't work with. Though these metal cliches are somewhat necessary to make these covers work, it does make for a lot of repetition. Powerglove still try their best to branch out from their core sound whenever appropriate and in turn there is a fair amount of experimentation on each track to make them unique. "This Is Halloween" and "Batman" make good use of string and choral samples to give the songs a much darker, apocalyptic feel. "Transformers" utilizes synthesizers to give it more of the futuristic sound you would associate with the show. "The Simpsons" even features vocals that make it standout from the rest of the instrumental tracks.

Saturday Morning Apocalypse is a wonderful sophomore album that really proves that Powerglove is a talented metal band with a knack for making childhood songs fucking metal. I would definitely recommend this to any metal fan and non-metal fans should still be able to enjoy it for the novelty of the concept. Let's just hope Powerglove can keep impressing us and not run out of fun songs to cover.

Rating: 8.5/10

-Tynan Evans (mrstuprigge)

Check out one of my favorite tracks from the album below!