Old-school NWOBHM band PAGAN ALTAR here get the reissue treatment from the very cool Shadow Kingdom records, The Time Lord EP containing demo material going back to 1978, remastered and reoffered to a listening public that isn’t exactly causing riots trying to form midnight lineups outside record stores to get this one, which is a shame: the title track combines a classic ’70’s rock sound with some more lush THIN LIZZY guitar lines; ‘Judgement Of The Dead’ is pure Sabbatherian proto-doom, all seven plodding minutes of it. I love the old-school production (you just don’t hear drums like this anymore) and the pure love and passion in the tunes. The band probably alienated most of their listeners by being completely unwilling to write songs that weren’t too long (opener ‘Highway Cavalier’ is not only the best titled tune here, it’s the best tune period at 2:37; the rest hover over five and can get up to eight minutes). But man, this is some enjoyable stuff, definitely firmly rooted on the second tier somewhere but with that clueless passion for early metal (doomy, rocky, trad-y, you name it) that only could have come out of a certain era. Wildly fun, satisfying, and comforting to listen to, metal academic types and NWOBHM historians will eat this up.
