Planet Of Zeus – Loyal To The Pack album review

Greek four-piece Planet Of Zeus journey to the pillars of rock – and beyond

By Malcolm Dome
( Metal Hammer )
published
Planet Of Zeus album cover

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Pitch any references you want into the equation – Clutch, Mastodon, Skynyrd, AC/DC – but what makes the fourth album from these Greeks work so well is that they’re individual.

You might start off nodding towards past icons when you hear Them Nights or Little Deceiver, yet once the riff kicks in and the Babis Papanikolaou’s vocals get going, all those comparisons fade away. Planet Of Zeus might have a hankering for 70- style hard rock, but they know how to slip everything into a contemporary gear. There are many glowing moments, from the chiming chords of Your Love Makes Me Want To Hurt Myself to the laid- back midnight smoke of Retreat and creeping staccato rhythms of Sea Bastards. Best of all, Indian Red takes Native American motifs in its majestic stride. This leads into the instrumental Athens, with its authentic Mediterranean momentum. Loyal To The Pack is joyously engaging.

Malcolm Dome
Malcolm Dome

Malcolm Dome had an illustrious and celebrated career which stretched back to working for Record Mirror magazine in the late 70s and Metal Fury in the early 80s before joining Kerrang! at its launch in 1981. His first book, Encyclopedia Metallica, published in 1981, may have been the inspiration for the name of a certain band formed that same year. Dome is also credited with inventing the term "thrash metal" while writing about the Anthrax song Metal Thrashing Mad in 1984. With the launch of Classic Rock magazine in 1998 he became involved with that title, sister magazine Metal Hammer, and was a contributor to Prog magazine since its inception in 2009. He died in 2021.