Jack Starr’s Burning Starr: Stand Your Ground (High Roller)

It’s been a while since we’ve seen an album from Jack Starr’s Burning Starr. Six years, to be exact, and that’s entirely too long to go without new music from a band that boasts guitarist Jack Starr (ex-Virgin Steele), vocalist Todd Michael Hall (Riot V) and drummer Rhino (ex-Manowar). The new album is titled Stand Your Ground, and it’s absolutely worth the wait.

Stand Your Ground is about what you’d expect from a Jack Starr’s Burning Starr album: it’s high-energy, hard-hitting and very melodic, with a nod to the early Virgin Steele sound and more than a passing similarity to the last Riot V album. The guitar melodies are ridiculously catchy, and Todd Michael Hall continues to prove why he’s the most underrated frontman in heavy metal. This is one headbanging, horns-raising melodic metal anthem after another, with “The Enemy,” “Hero,” “Escape From the Night” and “Stronger Than Steel” being the best of a very strong bunch.

There’s no need to overthink this one. Jack Starr and company have served up another killer collection of catchy, classic-sounding, impossible to resist, melodic metal songs. Stand Your Ground is a more than worthy addition to the Jack Starr’s Burning Starr discography, and is an album fans of bands like Virgin Steele, Riot V, Reverence, Walpyrgus, Dokken and Dio ought to absolutely love. This is one of the best traditional heavy metal albums 2017 has to offer.