Originally written for Valkyrian Music.
Despite the ticket presale going on a steady run, EQUALEFT singer Miguel Inglês never believed he’d have a sold out venue. Now, he has this pet hate of sorts for MANOWAR and he promised to buy a MANOWAR album in case the tickets did sell out. Guess who’s adding “Sign Of The Hammer” to their CD collection? 
EQUALEFT’s second full length album was featured in my expectations for 2018 but its release was held for a couple of months more and here it is, in the beginning of 2019. It’s okay, as the waiting was more than worthy (read the review here). And its live presentation…. well, their gigs are always mind-blowing, I can assure you that didn’t change a bit now! “We Defy” was played in full, but with… is 5-year-old songs too young to be considered “classics”? Anyway, “New False Horizons”, “Tremble” and “Maniac” were performed among the new ones, while “Invigorate” wrapped it all up with a golden key – without the Star Wars lightsaber but with two special guests: SOTZ’–Dan and TALES FOR THE UNSPOKEN–Marco. Gonçalinho came on stage to play the sax on the new version of “Uncover The Masks”, and while there are no guest singers on the album, WEB-Nando was called to sing along “Endless”. By the way, he lied about the cookies, obviously – a few boxes of them were offered to those who survived the violent mosh circles up front. Also, guitarist Miguel had his birthday that night and Inglês got us all singing him the “Happy Birthday” song, but the candles he blew were sitting on a symbolic kind of cupcake, so no cake for us – we deserved the other traditional cookies!
The release of “We Defy” was a deserved tremendous success. Don’t know what’s next, but I really hope is something even bigger – maybe selling out Hard Club’s main room? –, worthy not of buying a MANOWAR album but playing a cover of said band… 
Front Row Forever 