Doro, metal goddess and epitome of the female rocker, is back with a new album. For twenty years she has labored and shown the hard rock scene that it is not only a man’s world. Doro certainly doesn’t lack determination and her fellow rockers hold her in high esteem, which has led to the contribution of many a metal celebrity to this album. While Type O Negative’s vocalist Peter Steele has lend his voice to give color to the doom-like song “Descend”, Chris Caffery, well known from Savatage, plays guitars on the very same song. Other contributors to this album are Gene Simmons, Jean Beauvoir and Russ Ballard, who all have co-written a song.

Fight is a very natural and sincere sounding album with mostly quite straightforward hard rock songs and the true power of the album lies on the one hand in Doro’s powerful and dynamic voice and on the other hand in the diversity of the album. There are many influences in Doro’s music and not only hard rock or metal but also more pop-oriented material, which is due to Doro’s openness for all kinds of outside influences, lending this album a varied sound. While the raw title song “Fight” and the doom-like “Descend” border on heavy metal, songs like “Undying” and “Hoffnung” are very melancholic ballads, which typically display Doro’s softer and more melancholic side.

The sound of the album is heavy and natural with a good balance between the instruments and Doro’s very sincere vocals. Once in a while the album even has a slight live feeling to it and Doro went as far as to invite twenty of her fans to do backing vocals on the song “Rock Before You Bleed”. Unfortunately, this song exactly displays my problems with this album; the songs are extremely repetitive and although all the songs are short and compact, they unfortunately all tend to turn into an endless repetition of the chorus, which starts to get old quite quickly. Although there are certainly surprising moments on this album, like the aforementioned “Descend” and the splendidly melancholic “Hoffnung”, I am nevertheless afraid that Fight is overall too predictable.

Doro is a monument in the hard rock scene and with Fight she shows that she is not nearly ready to quit. With twenty years of experience under her belt and who knows how much more to come, one can only conclude that Doro has succeeded where many of her female colleagues have failed. She has remained standing in what is predominantly a man’s world and hopefully paved the way for others to follow.