Seven Metal Sins are a new act from France dedicated to the classic 80s heavy metal sound made famous by Accept and Gravedigger. On their Legacy of Chaos debut, they bring a ton of retro enthusiasm to the table, trying their level best to cobble together an album’s worth of headbanging, fist-pumping metal with loads of macho machismo and every traditional metal trope imaginable. The closest comparison is Gravedigger, as Seven Metal Sins base their sound around big, beefy riffs and warbling, semi-harsh vocals. This makes the material on Legacy of Chaos sit somewhere between Gravedigger classics like Excalibur and especially Rheingold. That’s a fine place to aim for, but unfortunately, it’s not so easy to stick the landing and come up equal to those particular platters. It also leaves those who attempt it exposed to sounding like an earnest but watered-down copy of the original. And in the worst-case scenario, a mere copy of a copy. Can Seven Metal Sins avoid these lethal pitfalls?
There’s no shortage of meatheaded metal exuberance on opening proper cut “Scars of Injustice.” It’s got everything someone who grew up in the 80s blasting Teutonic metal could want. Frontman Clovis Gay sounds a whole lot like Gravedigger’s Chris Boltendahl crossbred with Rebellion’s Michael Seifert, and he gleefully goes WAY over the top with a hoarse squeal and roar. As Clovis does his thing, Antton Iriat and Frédéric Auclerc flatten resistance with road-grading, burly riffs, and entertaining harmonies designed to bring out your inner ape. There’s a big whiff of Rheingold here, and I can’t huff enough of that Germanic wonderdust. The template thus set, Seven Metal Sins set out to build on it whilst beating your ass from chimpanz-A to pimpanzeE. Cuts like “Hypocrisy” eschew nuance in favor of head-on, full-speed collision dynamics, using riffacades and raw aggression to drive the point home, and it works for them in the same way it worked for Gravedigger on their best albums. Album highlight “Feel the Steel” takes this formula and runs with it for 4 minutes of brain-shaking classic metal fury that gets even an elder primate like me up and throwing heavy objects. It’s a warhammer of a tune, and it reminds me a lot of the better Rebellion material, including their mighty paean, “Taste of the Steel.”
Legacy of Chaos is the rare album that improves as it rolls along, gathering momentum and crucial energy, and the songwriting becomes more and more memorable too. Later tracks like “Wolves of the Last Dawn” and “Sun Eaters” are old-timey heavy metal burners, high on energy, low on subtlety, and they’re great for a tough cardio session. “Rise of the Phoenix” has one of the best choruses, and even the closing power ballad “King of Sorrow” works, both as a change of pace and a suitably epic finale. At just under 47 minutes, Legacy of Chaos is a fast-moving, jacked-up spin through the glory days of heavy metal, and no song outstays its welcome or bogs down the meat parade.
Clovis Gay has the kind of voice that was made for metal. He can sign, but often opts to roar, shout, warble, and caterwaul, and that’s the golden ticket for this kind of fare. Like Chris Boltendahl, he will be a love or hate proposition for some, but I dig his rough ‘n’ ready style and his silent film era villain moustache. That said, it’s Antton Iriat and Frédéric Auclerc who really anchor the sound with their mighty riffs and the way they use them to hammer at you until you give in and enjoy the ride. This is a tried-and-true formula, and it works in 2026 as it did in 1985.
When I first started spinning Legacy of Chaos, I felt like Seven Metal Sins were like Gravedigger from Temu or a “we have Gravedigger at home” situation. Both are somewhat true, but the band is stout enough to deliver an entertaining platter of metal nonetheless. There’s nothing here you haven’t heard a million times before, and no one will put this on end-of-year lists, but it’s a fun, brainless release with enough nut wattage to warm the cockles of the 80s metal fan. Now let’s commence to metal sinning.1
Rating: 3.0/5.0
DR: 5 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Rockshots
Websites: facebook.com/sevenmetalsins | instagram.com/seven_metal_sins.official
Releases Worldwide: June 5th, 2026
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