There is nothing on Udo Dirkschneider’s 16th studio album Steelfactory, from his namesake band UDO that I can't get from the first 15 UDO albums . . . and I freaking love it!
I have to appreciate a man who at the age of 66 can peel the skin off your scrotal sac with one of his patented screams, or is it a growl or a howl or a groan or just your everyday gargling of sand and glass. Whatever it is, it works. His ever present pseudo-sexual growl / moan is prevalent throughout Steelfactory, and it reminds us to have some freaking respect.
There are songs that lash out with the proverbial guitar assault so often associated with UDO as well as Accept. And if you a fan of song like London Leatherboys or Losers and Winners, then you’re going to love the cuts Like Eraser or the opening salvo Tongue Reaper. Smirnov is hitting on all cylinders with both riffage and ripage. Dude can play some classic power metal and we love being along for the ride, with wave after wave of super speed chords spiced with crest after crest of over the top solos.
Don’t worry - there’s also the classic power ballads. For those of you who loved Warrior, Bound To Fail or I Give As Good As I Get, you’re going to love some of the Steel Factory cuts which carry on that Udo-ish tradition. Keeper Of My Soul and One Heart One Soul make me want to stand and march around the bedroom while slashing everything I own in the name of some Teutonic cause that requires the virtue of a knight and the violence of a bull seeing red.
There variances in the nuance of the album and the newness of the music carries it a ways for me, but it is a LOT like much of Udo’s repertoire. I spend a few brief moments wondering what the germanic maniac metal god might sound like if he sang a Xandria song, adding Operatic and Symphonic elements to his sound, then I wake up from that nightmare and appreciate what this music nostalgia buff loves about power metal. This album is metal as metal is meant to be, which is the line I seem to want to vomit up every time I hear good metal.
As I watch the new Steel factory video for Rising High I see all the youthful exuberance that surrounds Udo Dirkschneider, particularly his son Sven on the drums. And then compare it Udo who spends the entire video Standing in the middle of the staircase one foot on the stair above the other and it occurs to me that I don't want him to move because I'm afraid he'll break a hip. And then I remember Udo doesn't give a shit what I'm worried about, and if he wants to he will jump down those stairs and break his hip. He's a metal cock-knockin’ head-banging fist fighting son of a bitch who brings his particular flare of metal to everything he's done since Accept in 1979.
Steel factory is simple and straight forward with a classic style seen with UDO since the 80s. So I end with the same sentence I used when I began, with Steelfactory Udo gives me not much different than I can find on his first release… and I freaking love it!