ARDITYON is a five-piece Traditional Heavy Metal band from Venice, Italy. This is their first release since 2019's ''Ardityon'' and for a rarest of times, no band changes since the first album so we can see the evolution of a such a young band in all it's glory. Traditions are arguably the most effective way of educating, or otherwise communicating some part of the past to the current generation. In keeping with this, there is not really a whole lot of middle ground when it comes to a core audience of a particular style; they either tend to be in love with tradition and despise any attempt at augmenting it, or oppose it so vigorously that anything resembles 80s metal is anathema to their ears unless it was created during that decade. This is often why an established audience will look less favorably on a partial attempt to return to an established sound than they will an exact continuation of a new course, because anything will be interpreted as a betrayal, while an attempt to partially back pedal while still exploring new territory will be seen as a disingenuous attempt at making up.

Veteran status is something of a relative concept in metal, but it is pretty safe to say that when a band is coming up on 20 years of breaking the silence and the prime members have an additional decade of experience in other acts, that the collective is far from amateur. Yet here we have a relatively young band with some experience though with experience comes a sense of what works and what doesn't, so stylistic evolution tends to be a secondary concern, particularly when the style is a longstanding one. There's always a group of depressingly deluded people who expect some grand, genre-redefining moment that will still magically be coherent, and ARDITYON has taken the wise route of failing to acknowledge the existence of such people when at their craft. They have adopted old school power/speed metal orthodoxy, and ''Trenchslayer'' is a powerful yet all too typical reaffirmation of existing traditions.

In terms of songwriting and production, this album functions largely as playing off the same established formula of speeding nods to old school bands like ACCEPT and new veterans like PRIMAL FEAR, and the occasional epic nod to IRON MAIDEN and HELLOWEEN . Their producer has brought new meaning to the notion of modern yet masterful, and the result is a massive sound that rivals the bombastic character of a number of symphonic acts and the New Wave of Traditional Heavy Metal. But as with any fine piece of metal craftsmanship, the magic that takes place at the refinery would otherwise come to naught if the existing elements were not already an exercise in raw power.