Band:	Judicator
Album:	Concord
Style:	US power metal
Release date:	March 28, 2025
A review by:	musclassia

01. Call Us Out Of Slumber
02. Sawtooth
03. Johannah's Song
04. A Miracle Of Life
05. Weeping Willow
06. Imperial
07. Hold Your Smile
08. Concord
09. Blood Meridian

Judicator are much-changed coming into Concord as far as personnel is concerned, but as the power metallers tackle this new frontier with stories about the old frontier, the wheels aren’t in danger of falling off their wagon.

This perhaps is not the most seismic shake-up that the group have faced when entering a new album, when considering that previous release The Majesty Of Decay was the first from Judicator without co-founding guitarist Alicia Cordisco, but three new names have joined the fold between records, including drummer Mike Lofgreen and guitar duo Chad Anderson and Dayton Andersen (both of whom played with vocalist and sole remaining founder John Yelland in Disforia). Even though Yelland is the primary songwriter, I can imagine there being some temptation to play it safer in the face of such a shake-up, but Concord, themed around the Old West (as the cover art makes suitably clear), is not a case of Judicator resting on their laurels.

That said, the more progressive slant that emerged on The Majesty Of Decay has been dialled back to an extent (although is still firmly on display during the complex instrumental breaks in “Imperial”, not to mention the 8-minute closing track “Blood Meridian”), with slightly greater focus on hooks and accessibility on the songwriting front. How much people appreciate this shift will likely correlate to some degree with how much they enjoyed the approach on The Majesty Of Decay, but Judicator have demonstrated themselves more than capable of writing memorable choruses over the years, so an album built around that strength unsurprisingly delivers plentifully.

The band have, quite reasonably, been subject to many comparisons to Blind Guardian over the years, much of which has resulted from the similarity in tone between Yelland’s vocals and those of Hansi Kürsch (including the extensive harmonizing). While the instrumentation has drifted further from that influence over the years, hallmarks of Blind Guardian’s thunderous speed metallic riffing are easily detectable particularly on “A Miracle Of Life”. It’s a big boisterous chorus in that track, but my personal favourites from the record at the moment are both at the beginning of the record. “Call Us Out Of Slumber” shifts gears quickly from a brief acoustic opening into a rousing romp that brings together the best features of Europower and USPM with hooky verses, soaring choruses and some tasteful keyboard/orchestral arrangements from session keyboardist Francisco Javier Pérez. This opening track is possibly the outright peak of Concord, but the slightly more measured grandeur of “Sawtooth” right after is very enjoyable too, and its chorus is beautiful in its sweeping majestic nature.

After this winning one-two, I do feel like a sense of unevenness creeps into the record. There’s something about the major keys used in “Johannah’s Song” that doesn’t quite land in the way the preceding tracks do, and while “A Miracle Of Life” is fun in its stomping opening minutes, the mid-song seque into a saxophone solo is frankly incongruent to the point of distraction. There’s a couple of other wildcard features on the album, including harsh vocals at the beginning of “Imperial” and blast beats in its chorus, but the saxophone solo for me is a swing and a miss. With all this said, the album also has its shining moments in the middle stretch, and gets solidly back on form in its latter stages.

I’m not particularly fond of the trudging pace and awkward vocal melodies in the verses of “Hold Your Smile” (a track that has a touch of 00s minstrel-esque Blind Guardian to it), but the chorus is very bright and charming, and acts as a key moment in the album where it really gets back on song for me. Afterwards comes the title track, which has a big anthemic chorus and almost gospel-esque harmonizing from guest vocalist Niki Rowe in moments. The conclusion to the record is the aforementioned “Blood Meridian”, a triumphant prog-power beast that manages to just about avoid overdoing the narrative storytelling with its lyrics to the detriment of the song, and which has a surprisingly heavy metallic conclusion in which blasts reappear (the actual conclusion is a hoedown accompanied by jovial spoken word narrating lines from the book’s iconic epilogue).

The way that the album goes slightly off the boil during its middle stages does mean that I’m not inclined to crown Concord as Judicator’s finest work to date, but the strength of its opening and closing songs make the first outing for this new-look line-up a pretty successful one overall.