It’s been a while now since the first wave of retro-Heavy Metal hit the shores of our musical world. We grew accustomed to hear young men whose only goal seems to revive a sound that was created before they were even born… Canada’s Cauldron’s three members are of those lads trying to make us believe we’re still in 80-something, or deluding themselves this music’s still has relevance in the third millennium, some might say.

Obviously, not inventing anything of your own, recycling the past and nothing but the past comes with consequences and there are many ghosts haunting Burning Fortune, ghosts from a glorious past also known as the NWOBHM, ghosts whose names are only too familiar and sound only too vivid in our memories not to overcrowd one’s listen of the album with a gamey state of mind, trying to find where said riff comes from, who that chorus have been borrowed from, whose solo was particularly close to that of Cauldron’s axeman... Names? Accept (I know not Brits, their German cousins, kind of), Saxon, Tygers of Pan Tang, Demon, Angel Witch, and so on, and so on… It’s all great fun but, in the end, reduces Cauldron’s album to something of a toy, a fleeting kind of fun. And, trust me; it’s about the only way to enjoy an otherwise quite average affair where Jason Decay’s mid-ranged vocals do the trick on the more aggressive, faster tracks (where it mostly relies on energy, something he seems to possess), but fail to satisfy on the more AOR/pop oriented material where he’s never clear, powerful or tuned enough to meet the standards required in such endeavor. Anyway, what’s to say of an album where the best track is a cover version of another band (Halloween’s I Confess)? … Got it? Good.

From a nostalgic point of view, you might think Cauldron have reached their goal; Burning Fortune does really sound and look (that “artwork”…) like a lost album from another time, one the listener’s quickly realizes why it’s been lost these 30 years, it’s just not very good and, thus, will only appeal to 80’s Heavy Metal hardcore enthusiasts. Others can safely pass their way, they’re not losing much. And, guess what? They’ve already released another album, one unless I read they got their act together, I’m afraid I’ll have to pass on.