Imperial Age / Control The Storm, Slay Glasgow 24th January 2023

With the 2022 ‘New World’ album to show off, they start with its opening track, ‘Windborn’, and sprinkle a few other new songs throughout the set, including the prophetic ‘Distant Shores’ and ‘The Wheel’. ‘Death Guard’ is a familiar early favourite but ‘The Awakening’ showcases the band’s sound perfectly. It is symphonic, grandiose and pompous and features the quite magnificent trio of classical lead vocalists – Alexander ‘Aor’ Osipov; Jane Odintsova and Anna KiaRa.

There is definitely an added-intensity in the band’s performance - perhaps unsurprisingly, given the adversity they have faced – with a definite feeling of an uncaged beast being unleashed. ‘Legend of the Free’ in particular, is delivered with an almost punk rock tempo at first.

This is now truly an international band. Jane and Aor currently reside in Turkey and recently recruited drummer, Manuele Di Ascenzo, hails from Italy. There are also a couple of guest musicians tonight; Tim Schaling on bass and local lad, Ryan Thomson, from the kingdom of Fife playing lead guitar. Given the intricacies of the band’s music, that is quite a challenge but they managed to pull it off and, as Aor said, there was no way they were going to cancel, despite more last-minute visa issues.

The most poignant moment on an emotional night came with the band’s epic ‘And I Shall Find My Home’. Alexander was educated at The High School of Glasgow – his father is a lecturer at a Glasgow university and was present at the gig – and considers Scotland to be one of his homes, adding that ‘and as I no longer have the other one…’. Needless to say, the Glasgow crowd treated him as one of their own.

The show climaxes with ‘The Legacy of Atlantis’ and the entire evening is an absolute triumph for the band and they will have felt the tidal wave of goodwill from the audience. It is unlikely that the challenges of their quest are over, but hopefully their herculean efforts will find just reward in this world or the next.

Also honouring their pledge tonight are Control The Storm, who had been hand-picked as support for the original dates and have risen to the challenge again. They are rewarded with a decent length of set and a great response from the audience, not least at the merchandise stall after their show.

A couple of songs from their debut album, ‘Beast Inside’, are a rare treat but they largely focus on the excellent ‘Forevermore’ album, with classics like ‘Strike to Defend’. The band seem to have really grown and gained confidence from appearances at Winterstorm and Download and they deliver strongly here. The keyboards of Raedon Mac add melody and a symphonic rock edge but at times they ‘gallop’ like Iron Maiden and soar like Dragonforce. The highlight of the set was ‘Curse of the Voiceless’ which works better live than on the original studio version and benefits from tremendous on-stage vocal interaction between impressive front-woman Firouzeh and Raedon.

The band released their version of the Jim Steinman / Bonnie Tyler classic, ‘Holding Out for a Hero’ as a single last year and it gets a great response at the end of the set. After about ten seconds of its distinctive intro, Firouzeh asks the audience if they know what it is yet and, of course, they do do do do!

Famously, Firouzeh is married to a national treasure in Bez and, whilst she may not be asked back onto Celebrity Bargain Hunt, she and her bandmates will be guaranteed a warm welcome in Glasgow anytime and should go from strength to strength as a metal force throughout the UK.

This was also my first visit to Slay and I must say I was very impressed. It is centrally located and housed in the basement of a shops and offices complex and next door to a car park. It is bright, fresh and airy with plenty of space and provides a very pleasant environment. Photographers should like it as the lighting is good, although there wasn’t an actual ‘pit’. There were no draught beer options but there was a good selection of drinks available and I felt it compared very favourably to some of the more established and similarly-sized halls in the city.