ALBUM REVIEW: Jeris Johnson – ‘Dragonborn’

If the general jank of his Elder Scrolls OC on the cover didn’t clue you in, this is not the usual direction for Jeris Johnson. Believe it or not, but the man whose big break came with the trap-rock slab-dragger damn! (subsequently reworked for a Chad Kroeger guest feature, no less) doesn’t have a wealth of musical experience in playing dress-up as a Viking. Not none, though they’re not bits you’d naturally extrapolate to this degree. The sporadic glimpses at folk-ish instrumental twang and the thematic conceit of his earlier track My Sword feel almost too fringe to herald a pivot of this magnitude.

Still, when has being stranded out of their element ever stopped artists like this from trying? Johnson’s whole branding is of the omni-genre creative with limitless possibilities. Plus, stepping away from the rap-rock clutter of last year’s I WANT BLOOD / i want love is only a good thing. If that album was an example of what Johnson should be doing in his current biome, one so clearly in the passion-project space as Dragonborn—where the contemporary feel is bred into 2000s metal and broadsword-wielding iconography—could present something more definitive.

As far as the results go…yeah, you can’t really argue with that. No other word seems suitable for a one-two of Johnson celebrating the influence of Avenged Sevenfold in his formative years on Ode To Metal, right next to an outsized rock-ballad rendition of Kiss From A Rose. Not exactly committing to the Viking bit, though, which is an issue that Dragonborn can run into. At least those songs are fairly good; Not A Person (Freak) is more your typical emo-rap-rock wallow that could’ve been cut with no repercussions whatsoever. On an album that can already struggle under its bloat, the more extensive deviations from what’s closest to a ‘theme’ just aren’t cutting it. If anything, you end up appreciating more the colliding fronts of goofiness that these specific ends of rap and metal can bring—the grunting combativeness on the most basic drinking-song repetition imaginable on Eat Drink War Repeat, or the call of “All the wenches in the tavern, break it down” on Siren Song.

Probably the best part about that is how humour on Dragonborn is derived from the heightened nature of its source. This isn’t supposed to be a comedy album, nor should it. Rather, there’s an understanding from Johnson of thematic beats that lean that way on their own. Thus, you wind up with an album that feels regularly flagrant and overblown, and compared to how dour and flavourless his rap-rock sphere can be, it couldn’t be more welcome. Riffs and solos will scream and soar like they themselves are being used to command dragons, alongside a keeness for radio-rock’s acceptability on the title track or John. Clearly some past proximities to Nickelback and Papa Roach have paid off.

To that end, there’s almost a paradoxical compromise to Dragonborn. Johnson might be co-opting the aesthetic of Amon Amarth, but the outcome is far from the same; flip things over, and the fact that Story Of Our Lives and Down With The Dynasty are still adamant about packing in beats and bass is absolutely a novelty in this sound. That’s the lurch that Dragonborn often finds itself contending with—being the product of a vision clearly unimpeded by creative mandates or restraints, and how much of that inadvertently falls into a space of ‘isn’t it fun to be quirky and weird?’. The difference between Johnson and a lot of similar acts is that it does feel inadvertent. At its heart, Dragonborn’s love for this kind of spectacle in metal feels genuine, and Johnson has all the means he needs to run free with it. Regardless of whether it’s a little overcooked or unfocused (even within single tracks, sometimes), it couldn’t be more of its own thing.

Even if the pockets of greatness on Dragonborn can’t scale up to the whole thing, that’s the kind of tremendous benefit that can’t be denied under any circumstances. The fact that Johnson is actually proficient within it is an added bonus. It makes the album more exhilarating overall, through twin-headed, masculine-coded ideals of metal brawn and Norse conquest, in the no-brainer way that it frequently is. And even if Johnson’s own bells and whistles don’t upstage good ol’ Viking Classic, the fundamentals remain unshakable. For genre-bending’s own Dovahkiin, that’s enough.

For fans of: Avenged Sevenfold, Zero 9:36, Papa Roach

‘Dragonborn’ by Jeris Johnson is released on 23rd August.

Words by Luke Nuttall