After the announcement that Gus G is officially the new Ozzy Osbourne guitarist in the summer of 2009, many people not only had predicted a future breakup of Firewind, but had already jumped to the conclusion that the break up had already occurred, with no such evidence whatsoever. Of course that was never the case, with an obvious outcome being the new 6th full length band’s release titled “Days Of Defiance” in October 25 (the first single “World On Fire” was already released by August 17).

After listening to the first notes, it is obvious that the sound is heavier than their two previous works “Premonition” and “Allegiance”. It is definitely due to their detachment from Fredman Studios and the mixing of the album at the Sonic Pump Studios by Nino Laurenne (THUNDERSTONE) and Tapio Pennanen. The songs are a mixing of compositions that vary in style between the “Heaven and Hell” and the “Allegiance-Premonition” era, since they possess some of the heaviness and straightforwardness of their prime albums, but still retain the melodic lapses of their most recent period.

Something that drew my attention was the fact that the guitar instrumentals have returned, since we have the exceptional “SKG”, this time not only a  guitar theme, but also a keyboard theme, with the important participation of Katsionis (for all those wondering what the title means, it is the three letter code of Thessaloniki airport used by airline companies). That of course does not mean that Gus is only showing off his guitar abilities, on the contrary, it is a work of a band that are maturing and composing together, and not of a guitar hero and his session musicians.

This time, there has been a replacement behind the drums, where the German Michael Ehre (Metalium) has taken the place of Mark Cross and whom we recently saw while Firewind played as support for Scorpions (where there had also been a recent and temporary change, that of the bass player Petros Christo by Marios Iliopoulos of Nightrage due to family reasons at the time).

Apollo Papathanasio (who has recently joined Spiritual Beggars), gives all of the tracks a specific (almost blues oriented) color, since he is not the typical high pitched power metal singer, but has a great range and distinctiveness, that gets more obvious and mature in the latest album. The cd contains  13 tracks for the regular edition, while there is also a limited edition digipack with 3 more bonus tracks, “Wild Rose”, “Ride To The Rainbow’s End” and the cover of “Breaking The Law” of Judas Priest, which make it definitely worth buying.

Generally, this album is among the best of their carrier, since it contains melodic power metal inspired compositions, with catchy hooks, choruses that remain in your head for a long time, without falling to the trap of simplicity and cheesiness, like  “Cold As Ice”(with its intro riff referring to Yngwie Malmsteen’s works), “Losing Faith”  “World On Fire”, the magnificent ballad “Broken”, the sentimental and lyrical bonus track “Wild Rose”, but also heavier and “darker” moments, like “Chariot”, with obvious Μaiden references, “Kill In The Name Of Love”, “Embrace The Sun”.

The only indifferent track, according to my opinion, is the up tempo euro power style “Heading For The Dawn”, which reminds me a lot of several similar Stratovarius songs and I don’t thing has anything to offer to their style. Another observation, is that while the guitar work is indisputably very good, with excellent given riffs and solos, personally as a guitar oriented music fan, I would prefer a step ahead in that area, when there is such a virtuoso player and also a very inspired composer to support the whole thing and make a difference (as I believe has happened to the –unsurpassed for me so far in this section-two first albums).