By Albert Mansour

This Swedish band’s debut album opens with a great punch and manages to recapture some of that magic of the retro 80’s metal scene. In terms of performance, the entire cd is drenched in quality work. Some of the great highlights here are the vocals and the guitar riffs, both of which have a pure 80’s sound. Mean Streak delivers more than a few jolts. The lead vocals are close to Udo Dirkschneider of Accept, while the guitar rhythms and solos are just like Judas Priest – anybody can hear this pretty well. The pace is very steady with solid lead guitars going back and forth, Metal Slave is about exactly what you always wanted in a NWOBHM style album. These guys give a helluva good performance, showing a great influence of Judas Priest, Battleaxe, Saxon and early Scorpions. It is a pleasure to listen to a debut album like this. The ten track cd contains a wonderful booklet and has great front cover artwork too. The highlights here are “Whom the Gods Love Die Young”, “Rock City” and “Raise your Hands”. Overall, the only draw back here with this debut album is the lack of originality , which isn’t the end of the world. In any event, over the course of the 44 minutes, Mean Streak stays focused and pulls it off. this may be a tad slow for today’s audiences, but fans of eighties metal will eat it up!

(Black Lodge)