More than 40 years of a career and still there: that’s the first thing that came to mind when I heard that US Metal legend VIRGIN STEELE has a new album out. The second thing was, that they haven’t released a really fine album in this whole millennium. Well, after looking it up, I realized that I even missed their latest records, no less than three full length releases in 2018. Maybe this happened because VIRGIN STEELE lost all the meaning they had to me, releasing those mainly overambitious to mundane records since “Invictus” in 1998. Thus I severely lowered my expectations before I listened to “The Passion Of Dionysus”. My bad I didn’t lower it down to zero, for even those low expectations were really disappointed. The band’s main man David DeFeis refers to the style of the band as “barbaric-romantic Metal”. To prove him wrong: “barbaric” implies powerful and savage, “The Passion Of Dionysus” is lame and tame. The drums are so wishy-washy (drums?? – Frank), it just makes me want to cry, and the guitars are powerless, the solos redundant to blatant. “Romantic” implies passion, the nearly 80 minutes of the album have no passion at all. “Metal”? Are you kidding me? This album is not Metal, I sometimes even won’t even call it Rock, as it’s too often too close to German Schlager music with those omnipresent sloppy keyboards and the fake orchestration. And this only applies to seven of the ten songs. Three of them are even worse. ‘Spiritual Warfare’ is such a silly song that sounds like VIRGIN STEELE have written it a thousand times before, but this one is the completely annoying version of it. And the final two songs are even more than annoying. It’s not the grand finale, but a grand disaster. ‘Unio Mystica (The Girl With The Grave Deep Eyes)’ is nothing but cheesy chicken shit! The vocals even cause toothache. And ‘I Will Fear No Man For I Am A God’ is such an unbearable shit, where terrible cheesiness meets watered down Groove Metal elements and complete failure in song writing. To put it short: with “The Passion Of Dionysus” VIRGIN STEELE finally ruined their reputation completely and caught up with MANOWAR as far as ridiculousness is concerned. It’s so sad to witness the downfall of this band. In case you want to make sure, visit www.facebook.com/virginsteeleofficial or www.facebook.com/spvsteamhammer. But you have been warned!