Forced II Believe

It’s a well known fact that there was a huge resurgence in the power metal genre in the late 90s, but what is less known is that there were a lot of struggling bands in the between years that were rising and falling to make that all possible. Court Jester is one of those bands who, despite being from Germany and co-existing with the likes of Gamma Ray, were not cut from the melodic and hyper fast European grain that would rise soon after they broke up. When you compare the music to the various forms of power metal, this has more in common with Armored Saint, Manilla Road, and to an extent the NWOBHM outfit Diamond Head.

Most of this stuff is extremely guitar oriented and riff based, varying a little from song to song depending on the moods being portrayed. The opening instrument and “Serpents”, which may as well just be a single 4 minute song, get about as close as the album gets to hitting the Helloween cliché of a brief overture followed by a speed metal song, but ends off coming off as more of an Accept song following an Armored Saint intro. Much of the contents on here definitely delve into the crunchy riff attack heard on early Diamond Head, most notably “Visions Of Fear” and “King Of Masquerade”. “The Master” has Iron Maiden meets Riot written all over its principle riff, and is given a slight Grim Reaper tilt by Chitty’s vocal interpretation.

They veer a little bit away from the 80s British/US metal format on a couple songs, mostly to go back a little further into metal’s history. “In The Name Of God” is right out of the Sabbath formula for dark, doom oriented metal with a thick atmosphere, given perhaps a little bit of a Candlemass tinge by the vocals which are definitely more epic than horrific. “As We Told” is a pretty solid homage to the epic “Heaven And Hell” era of Sabbath’s history, executed just as well as Hammerfall would do a good 3 years before. There is also a really catchy yet sorrowful ballad on here in “Tales From The Dark Side” which has a pretty simple yet great chorus, and listens like a more metal version of a ballad than what some were passing off as power ballads in the 80s.

The principle reason why this album wasn’t better renowned is because of when it came out, or at least that’s the only reason I can think of. It’s self-produced and has a similar low-fi production that makes it even more appropriate sounding for the style it’s emulating, which may explain why it wasn’t picked up by younger fans of the power metal genre. It’s pretty rare nowadays, as is the case with self-released albums that didn’t quite catch on in their day, but if you can find it and you liked the US power metal of the mid-80s, it’s definitely worth checking out.