Singer Zach Slaughter literally broke his neck skateboarding prior to the recording of Chasing the Dream, which isn’t quite Rick Allen-level tragic but still pretty bad. That should tell you how seriously he approaches his passions – especially since he went into the studio to record this as soon as he healed. This thunderous throwback metal set references everyone from the Scorpions (“Bad for Good”) to Iron Maiden (“Call of the Wild”) to Manowar (“Sign of the Warrior”) but Slaughter’s high-pitched, high-energy howl acts as the special sauce that ties everything together and makes it the Fist’s own. This is basically the Platonic ideal of heavy metal.