"Shadowmaker" tanks because it doesn't feel like a Running Wild album. The amazingly epic guitar work has been reduced to cheap 80s rock chops, and the fantastic songwriting wallows in poorly forged choruses and predictable arrangements. Hearing something like "Piece of the Action" made my jaw drop; there's no way this lifeless dud has anything to do Running Wild...right? Wrong, it does. Sadly, about seventy-five percent of the record moves on without making a dent at all. I still can't remember a thing about "Into the Black" or "Locomotive," and the other songs that at least made a fracture in my memory deserve to be lost in the infinite waves of my unconscious, because that's precisely how terrible I feel when I hear the banes of "Shadowmaker." Other winners include the crawling title track and a mediocre roast called "Sailing Fire," just mid-paced flops offering not a cell of decency. "Me and the Boys" is an annoying, chirpy number that makes me picture a bunch of bros slamming their dicks together before they go out and act like total douchebags, completely unaware that the joke is indeed on them. It's so upbeat and poorly written that I feel my testosterone levels and respect for Running Wild crashing...why in the Hell does this exist? It's just awful, inexcusable garbage.

It would be rationally unfair to go berserk on the whole album because some of the tunes are fairly substantial compared to most of the spoils throughout "Shadowmaker." A chunk of the lead guitar work throughout the record gives it some color, and Rolf sometimes shows flares of a former glory during "Riding on the Tide" and "I Am Who I Am," probably the only truly beefy tunes "Shadowmaker" can offer. The album's epic, "Dracula," has some cool riffs and ideas within its corridors, but it only manifests itself properly for maybe four or five minutes before the blood runs dry, and it can't hold a fraction of a candle to the magnificent epics Rolf previously penned such as "The Battle of Waterloo."