I'm going to be honest with you. I have heard them before as a band and a couple of their songs, so I can't say that IRON MASK is a well known band for me. But listening to "Shadow Of The Red Baron" I think that I should check out their previous releases.

I'm not sure if I have to call IRON MASK a Dushan Petrossi project or a full band, but that doesn't matter much. Their journey in the music industry started in 2002 with their debut album "Revenge Is My Name". Three years later, in 2005, their second album entitled "Hordes of the Brave", came out. And...that's about it! It's not my fault that they have only this information in their bio.

As for "Shadow Of The Red Baron": to tell you the truth, I was expecting it to be a concept album, due to the cover and the title. Not that not being a concept album is bad though. The first self titled track made me have great expectations for this CD. Great production, not that I've expected anything less nowadays from a Power Metal band, and a song that your head will want to start moving up and down from the first seconds. The bridge and the chorus are easy to remember and to sing and even though it's almost a seven-minute composition it will not make you get bored. The Malmsteen aura is surely here and the powerful drumming from Stout makes it a really good opening. Not that the rest of the album is bad, on the contrary. Most of them have choruses that are easy to remember, nice melodies and solos and Valhalla Jr's voice is the one that the album needed. But not everything is nice here.

Even though I did like the album, there is a problem. OK, I know that one time we want something innovative and some others we like the old school Metal. In "Shadow Of The Red Baron" I do like that it is faithful to the old school "Melodic Neo-Classical Power Metal", as their record company says in the info sheet, but there are moments that Dushan's ideas are not filtered. So you are starting to think that this sounds like IRON MAIDEN and the other riff like HELLOWEEN and this part is a typical Malmsteen one. That's what I don't like in any album.

Overall, this is a nice CD among all of crap that is being released. Well worked tracks and nice melodies will make any Metal fan that likes this kind of music have a good time. And if they manage to absorb their influences things will be even better. Best moments: "Shadow Of the Red Baron", "Resurrection" and "Universe".