Armored Saint – Emotion Factory Reset
Armored Saint – Emotion Factory Reset
Metal Blade
Release Date: 22/05/26
Review by Jon Deaux
8.5/10
Armored Saint was born back in 1984, and the good news is, they’re still alive and releasing albums. The audacity of it, frankly. While most of their contemporaries are either dead, well, quite a few of them are buried somewhere — reformed for the nostalgia cash or have started playing cover versions of their own material under the pretext of ‘tribute shows’, these madmen from Los Angeles release their ninth studio album, and the sheer nerve of them managed to pull it off in good quality. It offends me personally. I had plans for this day.
The name of the album is ‘Emotion Factory Reset’, which sounds like something they write on a whiteboard in your therapy session in exchange for a £180 fee and then shag your wife. It seems the name was suggested by the guitarist Phil Sandoval, and apparently, it stands for ‘reset yourself back to clarity. Think about it before you do anything else. You can’t change external factors’
Phil. With all due respect to you, I came here for metal, not Headspace notifications.
‘Close to the Bone’ introduces us to the album and sounds like a door being kicked in, yet with direct eye contact. John Bush should sound like a tired Hoover at the moment, but for some reason, he’s still sounding like a live electric wire. ‘Close to the Bone’ is “a song that came out in 2026, in the vein of an Armored Saint song”. If Bush meant that the song came out in the future, as in ‘in the future, when Armored Saint releases its next songs’, he succeeded. The song is about working “with people who don’t see eye to eye”. Considering that the band has been going strong in various shapes for over forty years, this could be called the hostage negotiation memoir.
Next is ‘Hit a Moonshot’, which is the band’s own favourite song — and yes, it’s an ominous omen. “It is the most enjoyable Armored Saint album ever,” claims guitarist Jeff Duncan, who talks about his Les Paul and EVH amp as a kind of revelation. His description of “just good guitars plugged into a good amp and letting it rip” is the best definition of music and art in the past ten years. No complex arrangements, no vocal algorithms and production tricks. Just a guitar player. The song is about “people who keep succeeding in whatever they do”, as if they did it by chance.
One song where Bush really went overboard is called ‘Every Man-Any Man’. You can hear it yourself, but prepare. I’m serious. It’s Bush singing “I’m like a rogue, crazy evil cheating lucky little leprechaun” in a heavy metal song. In 2026. The song contains the line “the world has gone insane”. Bush explains that he’s “describing some sort of chaos agent”. He delivers it so seriously that you might confuse him for saying someone’s last rites. Bassist Joey Vera reminds one of the Commodores, and Bush compares the song to Andy Summers of the Police. That’s the best description I’ve heard in the context of a heavy metal song.
‘Buckeye’ features Duncan playing slide guitar — something unusual for the band’s lead guitar player. According to the band, the song contains “very deep and meaningful lyrics” by John Bush. “Deeply personal,” says Bush. “And it’s really a very mellow track”. Indeed. It’s that one song on the album that doesn’t overwhelm you. The song stays in mind like the stranger at a funeral who knows more than he lets on. That one guy at a party. You agree with everyone around that he’s intriguing, and yet no one invites him for coffee or lunch. Every album has this one guy.
Drummer Gonzo was working hard on his technique, specifically on “stick control, singles, doubles, paradiddles”. It’s clear he came to terms with himself in the process of playing drums, and the results are worth the deal with the devil he had to make back in 2023. Brother Phil suggested a title for the band’s album and a philosophy behind their songs — basically, everything that keeps the album together. The Sandoval brothers carry the rhythm section and the entire therapeutic experience behind the record. They are the foundation for this building of a metal album, and if either of the two leaves the band… well, I’m sure they don’t want to think about it.
“We used to be able to do it differently,” admits drummer Gonzo. Back in the days when “we weren’t twenty years old anymore with no obligations or responsibilities”. Which is the most realistic description of heavy metal bands in a press release I have ever read. Some twenty-year-old somewhere is laughing in despair while drinking his beer. Enjoy it, man, because the moment your responsibilities kick in, you’ll remember this sentence. There will be no escape.
This is the fourth consecutive Armored Saint album produced by bassist Joey Vera. He creates demos before the band works with the material, thus achieving the result that sounds like a spontaneous creation of a very organized person. John Bush delivered about 85% of his vocal takes during the demo sessions. There is spontaneity and authenticity in this record by an artist who has been performing for decades and still sounds as fresh as a daisy, even if he is not.
‘Epilogue’ finishes this magnificent album. What else do you need to know about the band? “There’s never gonna be another Master of Puppets or Appetite for Destruction,” says John Bush. “They belong to their place in time, just like any other accident or first marriage.” This record is not that. This is an Armored Saint record, made in 2026 by guys whose names should sound familiar to you. This is a metal record about a journey to the depths of humanity. Made by a band that started making music in the times of Ronald Regan and still manages to sound more alive and spontaneous than most contemporary acts. This is a metal record and there’s no denying it.
Is it perfect? Not entirely. Is it the Album of the Year? Probably. Is the inspiration behind the whole album the fact that Joey Vera received a new guitar from ESP and became interested in it — the most human and pathetic inspiration for creating metal? Sure, it is.
TRACKLISTING:
01. Close to the Bone
02. Every Man-Any Man
03. Not On Your Life
04. Hit a Moonshot
05. Buckeye
06. Compromise
07. It’s a Buzzkill
08. Throwing Caution to the Wind
09. Ladders and Slides
10. Bottom Feeder
11. Epilogue
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