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The band's name hinted at some kind of black metal band, but Japan's Satanica play a cool mix of old school heavy metal and modern power metal. The album has that crunchy, heavy and powerful sound that you expect from power metal bands these days, but there's also a good dose of early '80s heavy metal to be heard here and I was often reminded of Saxon while listening to this—even the singer has a bit of a Biff Byford thing going here, so there's no way the British legends were not an influence on Satanica. The album is varied enough, with a few punchy rockers and some more melodic, slower songs that really sound like they were written a few decades ago. It took me a couple of listens to get into this one as it does have its quirks here and there, but once you get past that, it's a fun album.