Cliché has it that following up your debut album is the tough ask. But London-based quintet Inglorious’s fourth proved to be a considerably bigger challenge, after all but leonine frontman Nathan James and drummer Phil Beaver quit after recording 2019’s Ride To Nowhere.
With three new members seemingly contributing more than their predecessors in terms of gnarly riffs and rhythmic gutpunch, the band have also overcome lockdown restrictions to record We Will Ride in a socially distanced Cardiff studio.
The results are their best to date, with She Won’t Let Go and Medusa (who apparently ‘gives good lovin”, snakes in hair notwithstanding) taking inspiration from femme fatales to breathe fresh life into an irresistible 70s rock template.
Echoes of Deep Purple, Whitesnake and Rainbow (both Dio and Bonnet eras) abound across melodically strident, melodramatically charged and riff-studded hard rock of a kind few bands currently dare to be passé enough to attempt.
Elsewhere an injection of Wagnerian power metal and James’s opera-worthy singing fuel the howlingly good He Will Provide, Cruel Intentions and the windswept title track.
Consider the redemption arc complete.
