Today we have the new release of the band LADY BEAST called The Inner Alchemist. The band was created around 2010 and this is the 5th album in their career. The gang from Pennsylvania delivers a traditional Heavy Metal approach with some touches of Power Metal as you can hear in the first track “Oracle's Omen” in which the guitar riff itself will bring the listener to the 80’s and 90's Metal era. We speed up a little with “Through the Eyes of War” that has an IRON MAIDEN vibe provided by the guitar duo of Chris Tritschler and Andy Ramage that delivers some interesting riffs. The band adds some touches of Hard Rock on “Inner Alchemist” that kind of names the album. The overall product sounds good in this release, but you can’t help to feel that little more work needs to be done in the vocal melodies that despite being good, are not memorable making the tunes sound too generic sometimes.

We reach the trippy “Starborn” that starts with a nice acoustic  instrumental that sets a peaceful mood before the heavy guitars introduce themselves. This is a weird one as it is a little confusing in its structure and the singing melodies are not captivating  or inspiring unfortunately. This does not mean that this is a bad album or a bad band, however, it is missing something more than the good musicianship offered. Songs have to make sense structurally for the listener as well. Intro, verse, pre-chorus (optional), chorus, verse, chorus, bridge (optional), chorus, in any order you want, with variations and additions depending on the song. LADY BEAST gets close to this in tracks like the good “Crone's Crossroads” and “Feed Your Fire” that for a minute there, I thought that I was listening to an IRON MAIDEN track. The ideas are there and they are good, but I believe more can be done to turn the songs a little more memorable. The band has also a killer bass player in Amy Bianco that is pretty much a better looking Steve Harris regarding  her playing style. The band even have a Phantom Of The Opera kind of track with no vocals in “Witch Light” where she can show her chops. The same can be said about competent drummer Adam Ramage that commands the beat with mastery.

The best track of the album in my opinion is “The Wild Hunt” since it has a more interesting singing melody. You can definitely say that LADY BEAST sounds like one of those bands from the NWOBHM era and not only the IRON band already mentioned. We end the album with the energy high on “Off with Their Heads” that has a creative guitar riff kind of out of time and a nice bass solo before the guitar. The album offers some good tracks and also some tracks that are not very inspiring and this happens with every band, even the big ones. The singer of the band is Deborah Levine and she has a good voice. However, Heavy Metal bands have vocalists with amazing voices and some work is required to reach that level.