At last! The band of Elias Logginidis is back with the most awaited album of the last 20 years (and more)!! “Die Fighting” is the new work of Spitfire, the most legendary Hellenic band of the classic heavy metal sound, which was greatly expected by everyone. The band’s current line up is except for their permanent member Elias Logginidis, Alex “Hannibal” Balakakis (vocals), Nikos Michalakakos (bass gutar) and Panos Chatzioannidis (guitar).

Truth is that after such a long wait, I was at least expecting more new songs. In fact the new songs are basically 6. The rest of the 6 songs that compose the album (the 13th song is an acoustic medley recorded in Gagarin club in 2006) are older compositions, of which: “Fool enough” and “Taste The Fire", are included in the album “100% Live” , released in 1990 under the name “Speedfire” due to legal differences. The rest of the 4 songs “Danger in the world”, “I am ready”, “Release Power” and “Everlasting Love” are familiar to me, I guess from the live appearances, since they have not been (at least not officially) released before.

The album starts with “King of the mountain”, a very beautiful song with a dynamic riff, which is one of the record’s highlights. Alex’s vocals are very fitting to the band’s sound, there are nice guitar melodies, and good solos. The band’s performance is very good and the production is satisfactory, at least for the Hellenic standards. Other songs that stand out are the magnificent and epic “Macedonia”, the totally sentimental ballad “Icarus”, a characteristic that Spitfire is well known for, the pompous “Gates of Fire”, while “Underground” reminds a lot of Judas Priest of the “Painkiller” era, as far as the music as well as the vocals are concerned. “Die Fighting” is a typical Spitfire composition with catchy riffs and vocal lines and beautiful, melodic solos.

Consequently, all of you who have loved Spitfire with the legendary “First Attack” will certainly be satisfied by “Die Fighting”, since it a classic Spitfire release. Let’s hope that their next album will not take 22 more years to be released, and that it will contain only new songs.