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I have reviewed quite a lot of Italian bands lately; it seems that there is one on every street corner. Skanners is yet another one. They combine German traditional metal with 80's British metal. Not many of you might know that Skanners was founded in 1982 and has already released several albums in the late eighties and early nineties. After 15 years they retreated until the release of their fifth album exclusively released in Italy. After re-releasing the first two albums they came up with a new record 'The Serial Healer'. That's history, so let’s concentrate on the new album 'Factory of Steel' now.

Compared to their previous album they haven't changed a lot and that wasn't necessary either. The music of the band is heavily influenced by bands like Accept, Judas Priest, Saxon and Grave Digger, but you hear more modern influences of bands like Dream Evil and Primal Fear too. Vocalist Claudio Pisoni has a warm metal voice and he sometimes reminds me of Ralf Scheepers. Most of the time the songs are mid-tempo, but sometimes they turn up the tempo. The weakest track is "Story of Sound". A ballad that doesn't make my heart beat faster (or slower), it doesn't touch me. Sometimes the choruses are a little too cliché, like in "We Rock the Nation", but who cares? In "The Lord of Flies" you can again hear some similarity between the voice of Claudio and Scheepers, although I must admit that Claudio isn't that good yet.

Conclusion: A decent heavy (power) metal album, which will not turn the world upside-down, but for fans of traditional heavy metal a nice one to start off with at the beginning of 2011.

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