Search the darkened nooks and crannies of any genre and you’ll find nuggets of wealth. Tried and true traditional heavy metal never had a visibility problem, but as I peruse heaping promo piles it doesn’t seen to have the market frothing had it had a decade ago when bands like Spirit Adrift and Haunt (somewhere between their fifth and fifteenth album) were showing just how much life the children of the NWOBHM could bring to the masses. So it’s a relief to find a band like Century not only holding the torch aloft for others to heed the call, but that they do it with a shine and polish that recalls my favorite bands of the past 40 years while maintaining a modern edge production-wise. Sign Of The Storm was an early highlight of 2025 for me, and almost a half year later still brings everything I want in my traditional heavy metal review to the fore.