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Sweden's Stormburner plays the kind of crunchy, European metal I tend to like a lot on their debut, Shadow Rising. There are big, hooky riffs, double-kick drums and soaring vocals all over the place. The singer has a prototypical voice for this type of metal with a fierce, growling mid-range and can hit the "nuts in a vice" high notes with the best of them. With song titles like "We Burn", "Eye of the Storm" and "Rune of the Dead," Shadow Rising appears to check all the boxes. Unfortunately, the songwriting falls short of the target Stormburner is aiming for. The melodies are fine but rather generic and the repetition in the vocal lines borders on egregious. Almost all the songs repeat at least one line too often, culminating in "We Burn" where the line "blood is painting on the (word I can't make out), we burn! We burn!" is sung at least 12 times in a row. I was ready to drive my car into a tree to make it stop. This is a debut and Stormburner have their hearts and guitars in the right place, but the songwriting will need an overhaul before they are ready to challenge the Primal Fears and Scanners of the world.