It really is a shame that this band had to throw in the towel. Not just because of the fact that their last album fuckin slayed, but because 'Stormchaser' is fucking head and shoulders above it! This is the album that fans have all been waiting and hoping for and the album that we all knew Light This City was capable of making. And while it is in every way a truly amazing, top notch album, it's also, unfortunately, their swansong.
Stormchaser is the album that would have truly and fully established Light This City's dominance over every other female fronted extreme metal band out there! And yes, that includes everyone's beloved Arch Enemy.
Not since the Swedish melodic death metal explosion has a band managed to combine such massive amounts of melody into their extreme metal arsenal without sacrificing a shred of brutality. 'Facing The Thousand' was full of wicked death-thrash riffing and searing leads, and definitely had huge doses of melody thrown into the mix, but it pales in comparison to this. And while some may have felt that 'Facing The Thousand' would be hard if not near impossible for the band to top, that's exactly what Light This City have done.
From the pristine production and guitar wizardry to the more personal lyrical content, 'Stormchaser' would have been Light This City's defining album. Getting back to Arch Enemy comparisons, 'Stormchaser' is Light This City's own 'Wages of Sin'. And the guest vocal spots from the one and only Chuck Billy (if you dont' know who he is, you're a lost cause), and John Strachan (The Funeral Pyre) only serve to make this disc that much more crushing and intense.
Another praiseworthy element of Light This City is that despite the level of technical proficiency within the band, they're not hung up on trying to gravity blast their way through an entire album while their guitarists burn through a hundred different time shifts. Technicality for the sake of it isn't gonna cut it here. Even with this being their last album, there are (thankfully) no trendy breakdowns to be found and no terrible "Bree" vocal failures, nor are there any unintelligible gurgles, grunts or annoying pig squeals. Laura's signature acidic rasps, with some wicked lows thrown in to suit the song where ever necessary, are all you're going to find on this album. And the band stay true to their epic thrash attack, while incorporating some ass kicking, headbanging rhythms that any metal junkie will acquire a stiff neck from, because this record WILL induce massive amounts of headbanging.
