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We can’t decide if this is the best or worst record title ever, so it’s fitting that its content wavers similarly between quality in-yer-face heavy metal and pantomime-cackling battiness. So crap it’s good? Or just crap? Or actually decent?

Merry-Go-Round opens on a commanding, atmosphere-building hook – Iron Maiden influences clear in ‘maaad metal-man’ vocals (soaring over the line of good taste with notions of getting ‘ready to rock’ with ‘that elephant cock’). A sophisticated blend of power metal and melodic, classic hard rock prevails in the title track, with a quality solo climaxing in twin-lead action.

Thematically they reach beyond their founding dragons, fire’n’brimstone shtick. Pythagoras, astrology, spiders from CERN spitting venom… or something. Mythological monster mash-ups are never far, though, feasting on children’s ‘salty flesh’. Mwahaha…

There’s not enough stand-out musical mastery, but it’s a step towards the credible metal album they may have in them.

Polly is deputy editor at Classic Rock magazine, where she writes and commissions regular pieces and longer reads (including new band coverage), and has interviewed rock's biggest and newest names. She also contributes to Louder, Prog and Metal Hammer and talks about songs on the 20 Minute Club podcast. Elsewhere she's had work published in The Musician, delicious. magazine and others, and written biographies for various album campaigns. In a previous life as a women's magazine junior she interviewed Tracey Emin and Lily James – and wangled Rival Sons into the arts pages. In her spare time she writes fiction and cooks.