When you call your single ‘Juggernaut’, you’re certainly not expecting your audience to take it lightly. …And, indeed, many of the riffs that power the current track from Tiberius hit their audience like a truck.

Unlike a lot of prog metal bands, though, this number shows that the Scottish prog metal band know how to write something concise. In under four minutes, ‘Juggernaut’ manages to be more impressive than some of the bigger names manage to be in three times the duration, but without skimping on any of the genre traits that genre fans have come to expect.

The track comes crashing in with a real immediacy when a barrage of jagged guitar riffs attack. Their sharper edges compliment a busy rhythm perfectly, but also share a tone that suggests there might be a great melody here too. Sure enough, by the time the hard edged pneumatics have completed a couple of rounds of intensive scene setting, Grant Barclay’s old school vocal steers everything slightly more in a trad metal direction, and his huge tones work brilliantly in tandem with Chris Foster and Jahan Tibrizi’s guitars.

Moving into the chorus, Grant retains a classic tone and a lot of charm – occasionally sounding like a more melodic Blaze Bayley – and the band adopt a slightly bigger sound to give a rousing hook a great send off. The guitars and drums are very sharp, but listen closely and you’ll also hear a bassline going hell for leather, somehow adding to the power without smothering a strong melody.

For those looking for something a bit more technical, a brief instrumental break stokes up the jagged edges and brings an off-kilter riff to the fore – leaning further into the kind of tropes you’d expect from the likes of Symphony X – before a pinch of power metal bombast fuels a massive climax.

Naturally, Tiberius aren’t about to win over any of the prog metal averse, and ‘Juggernaut’ is every bit as strong as the band’s earlier track ‘Tip of The Spear’, and it’s always a pleasure to hear something like this delivered with panache and strong vocals, in a world where the utterly tuneless James Labrie gets far too much credit.

Take a listen below.