Album Review: Majestica – Power Train (Nuclear Blast Records)

Sweden’s symphonic/power metal band, Majestica, embark on an exciting new journey with Power Train, released on 7th February 2025 via Nuclear Blast Records.

Launching back in 2019, Majestica made a significant impact in the metal community with their debut album, Above The Sky. This album showcased soaring melodies and powerful instrumentation, quickly gaining acclaim and amassing over 17 million streams. It established them as prominent players in the power metal scene, setting high expectations for their future work. In 2020 then, the band delighted fans with a unique release: a Christmas musical power metal album titled A Christmas Carol. This project beautifully intertwines the classic tale of Ebenezer Scrooge with their symphonic power metal style. The album not only highlighted their musical versatility but also offered listeners a captivating retelling of the beloved story, complete with orchestral elements and theatrical storytelling.

Seen as a bit of a side project of Tommy Johansson due to his busy schedule as guitarist in Sabaton, Power Train becomes the first album now with Tommy’s focus fully on Majestica having left Sabaton in 2024. So, with Power Train, fans can expect real power metal with an even more symphonic and epic sound.

Tommy Johansson describes:

“You can expect to hear an explosive and very melodic Power Metal album with a lot of catchy melodies, epic guitars solos, strong power metal vocals with fast, but also heavy drums!. We’ve taken the melodies and the Power Metal elements from our first album and mixed it with some of the choir and orchestral arrangements from the last one – perfect mix!”.

Majestica is Tommy Johansson on guitars and vocals, Petter Hjerpe on guitars, Chris Davidsson on bass and Joel Kollberg on drums.

Power Train comes with 10 new tracks and magical artwork from Jan Yrlund of Darkgrove Design. We have also had a couple singles out from the album so far and it starts off straight away with the first single released, and title track, Power Train. Now, before I get into this, I am going to just point out that we here at GBHBL are very big fans of Tommy Johansson. Loving his Majestica work, especially his Christmas stuff, and his work in Sabaton, but also his solo stuff littered across his YouTube channel.  As far as I am concerned, the man is a genius and in a strange way, while I will miss him at Sabaton, I am glad he left. Creative types like this need to do their own thing.

So, I go in to anything with Tommy’s name on it knowing a couple of things straight away. I am going to love the vocals, and the guitars. That’s a given. With power metal generally though, great singers and great guitarists are plentiful – it’s whether you can capture those moments of magic, moments of difference that make you stand out in a crowd. In that, A Christmas Carol aside, Majestica have not always succeeded. They have, for me, mostly delivered power metal songs in their most expected, and most predictable form. A couple standout tracks here and there, yes, but not consistent quality across all of their work.

Power Train certainly gets off to a good start with the title track. A song that showcases everything you want from Power Metal. A superb vocals performance, loads of catchy guitars and really strong drumming. It has catchiness, has memorability and, especially in the spoken section, plenty of cheese. The solos is really cool but the stand out part of this track is the simple but superbly catchy chorus. It’s a strong start. No Pain, No Gain keeps the quality high, again delivering a superb chorus with speedily sung vocals. I really like the pace and energy with the driving drums really pushing the beat on. Of course the vocals are strong – this dude is one hell of a singer. Plenty of melody and a huge solo with both guitarists delivering a mix of fire and harmony completes another good track.

Battle Cry speeds up further and adds a little darkness to the drums and riffs. It’s a welcome bit of variety added more to with the chant like backing vocals. The verses are great here mixing the backing chants with Tommy’s higher toned soaring vocals while the bass, drums and guitars blaze out meaty and melodic music at 100mph. The chorus lacks something – it just doesn’t quite grab you like the previous two songs but the extended solo and instrumental section which really lushes the symphonic part of the band is excellent. Megatrue mixes things up a bit, dropping the pace down to a thick and chunky bass led intro. Meaty drums, heavy riffs get your head banging and there are nice orchestrations in play as well.

The vocals, I know I have said it, but my god, his voice is immaculate. There is a good chorus that uses a gang vocal chant for a line, followed by Tommy with the next line and repeat. I like it, and it sticks with you but the verses here are the win with such a coll mix of heavier instrumentation, deep backing vocals and Tommy soaring above it all. The solo keeps the drums and bass prominent but picks the pace up nicely. My Epic Dragon comes next and is the longest track on the album at 6 and a half minutes long. You can tell by the name that we are heading into pure cheese and fantasy territory but don’t let it put you off what is a pretty special track.

It’s the first epic of the album delivering a slower symphonic intro, fantastical lyricism, huge video game like lead guitars and the best Tommy performance on the album. It’s a fast song, in terms of beat but is sung with a softer approach and with a chorus that absolutely soars. The solo is a perfect fit for the song, moving through different phases as it gets faster and then starts to drop gently back down. There are some excellent symphonic touches as well giving a real sense of depth and layers to the track. This is when Majestica capture that spark and show what they are capable of.

From the longest track on the album, to the shortest next with Thunder Power. A three minute blast track here on Power Train which delivers an impressive drumming performance, plenty of melody and backing vocals in the verse where the vocals are sung slowly despite the manic pace. I like that contrast and also the added menace to the vocals in the second verse. The chorus is fine – pretty standard but inoffensive and of course there is a cool solo with neat symphonic layers. A short song but it has a hell of a lot packed in and is another strong track.

Another single comes next with A Story In The Night. A song we reacted to, here, and felt it lacked a little spark. I must admit to finding it has grown on me more since this reaction though and I do like it a lot now. What can I say about the song that you don’t already know or expect? Great vocals, lots of awesome guitar work and impressive rhythm from the drums and bass. The flow of the vocals as it leads into the chorus is great and it has a strong chorus. It’s Majestica doing Majestica and Power Metal things. Nothing different, nothing ground breaking but a very good example of power metal.

Go Higher delivers a wonderful verse with a little extra heaviness, plenty of rhythm and melody and of course strong vocals but with a deeper tone. It works a treat but leads into a chorus that I don’t really care for. It’s well sung, melodic with good drums but again, lacks just a little something to make it really stick and have you singing along. There is another great solo though – a regular feature here on Power Train. As we approach the end, our penultimate track is Victorious, a song that is one of, if not the best on the album.

I love the guitars in the intro, the little bass touches and the slightly toned down vocals in the verse that then grow as the song evolves. Drums are great, going more for catchiness than speed. The chorus is magical and superbly infectious. Great melodies and led guitars drive the song on but the mic drops with the ending where we go full epic. Soaring vocals, choirs and symphony all deliver an ending that will raise the hairs on your arms. It’s such a good song, you wonder how it isn’t the closer so Alliance Anthem has a high bar to reach.And it’s another good song – they all are, but there are parts on this album where we reach excellence, and parts where we reach just below that – that’s the margins we are talking here.

This final chapter of Power Train has excellent musicianship, a decent chorus, great vocals, drums and guitars. It flows nicely, has some extra vocals and some darker, heavier sections. It has a whole lot going for it, but just lacks a little spark, a little something unique or special in it’s early stages to make it a track that you will come back to again and again. It’s ending is strong though, using the choir vocals at the back end of the solo before a final chorus and a bit of vocal stretching by Tommy. That leads into the spark bit, with a huge symphonic close where the guitars blaze, the choirs sing and Tommy soars.

It closes the album out in suitably epic fashion and it is a very good album. Definitely, A Christmas Carol aside, my favourite end to end work from Majestica to date. Perhaps that is to be expected, with Tommy and the band fully focused on Majestica now. I guess a lot of this was still written while Tommy was still in Sabaton though so perhaps there is more to come? I hope so as there are still moments across the album where you feel something is missing. It seems a strange thing to say I guess. Such is the talent of the members of this band that even at their worst, they are awesome and songs that are my least favourite always have many moments I love.

The talent in the band is huge and therefore they will always do something in a song you love so the difference is just that on some songs, you find yourself fully attentive, wanting to learn the lyrics to feebly attempt to sing along. You bang your head, or sway, or feel emotional. Then, occasionally, you just don’t. You listen, enjoy, find moments but also find your attention drifting. On previous releases, I was probably 50/50 across an album between drifting and attentive, here, it’s more like 80/20 in favour of loving it so I am very pleased.

I think any fan of power metal will also be, and there are some absolute stunners here. Majestica though, I’m sure, have a 10 out of 10 album in there. This isn’t it, but it’s getting closer.

Majestica Links

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