Where were you in the mid to late 00s? I was living the neo-thrash dream, where bands like Bonded By Blood, Gama Bomb, Warbringer, Evile, and others (anyone remember Rumplestiltin Grinder?) were picking up the torch dropped by the bands that got me into metal back in the 80s and running with it, palm muted chugging riffs and dive-bomb squeals littering the road in their wake. And while some achieved a modicum of success, the vast majority got left behind. I know I had no idea of the existence of Iron Age, an Austin, TX band who released two albums in their short history, but damn if The Sleeping Eye, the band’s 2009 sophomore and final release, reissued by 20 Buck Spin in 2019 doesn’t have the goods in a way no of those other bands did.

Tragically, any momentum the band would’ve picked up by the reissue (also just released as part of Gimme Metal’s Vinyl Club series, which is how I got it) by the death in 2020 of guitarist Wade Allison, a mere three months after the death of Power Trip frontman Riley Gale, who was a huge advocate and supporter of the band. But what they left behind in The Sleeping Eye is magnificent, a mammoth crushing the bones of thrash, sludge, and hardcore and picking up the fragments in an attack that is surprisingly technical even as it emphasizes the melancholic groove of its forebears. Ominous keyboards open to a frantic, riff attack that recall High On Fire meeting early Metallica on “Sleeping Eye Of The Watcher” and you can hear how Iron Age would be a huge influence on Power Trip’s sound and aesthetic. It’s a dark, grinding sound, and that darkness carries over to all the tracks. Allison was the primary composer as well as producer, and he knew exactly how to leverage the capabilities of the band. Drummer Jared Allison and bassist Justin Mason are so locked in it’s ridiculous, and the low end is huge without sound flabby, the better to hold together Allison and fellow guitarist Alex Hughes riffing.

That riffing is a steady barrage of chugging and harmonized licks across the galloping rager “Dispossessed” and the furious “Burden of Empire” where vocalist Jason Tarpey sounds like his throat is about to tear in half. Those songs are fantastic, but where the band really shine is on the slower, more grinding sludge moments of their neo-thrash revival. The two-part “Arcana” doles out equal doses of rage and doom, and the brief interlude “Material Prima” constructed by Tarpey is about as mystical and menacing as you could want from a band like this. Same with the epic eight-minute closer “The Way Is Narrow” which opens with the bass rumbling deep into the earth and the cymbals ringing out across a desolate landscape you know the band will rip apart in the ensuing few moments.

I think the reason why so many of those neo-thrash bands failed – and where Iron Age most definitely succeeded – is in the weight of their songs. You can blaze and chug 1,001 power chords and rip solo after solo until the cows come home, but if there’s no girth behind it, no shifting of tectonic plates, the music just evaporates into the atmosphere. The Sleeping Eye is never in any danger of evaporating: these riffs carve the earth up in devastating fashion. This is a hidden gem of an album that more people need to know about. Deep, heavy, and catchy.