Finland's Thunderstone return with a new lead vocalist Rick Altzi, current lead singer for the band At Vance. Surprisingly, I hardly hear any power metal as Thunderstone seem to have become a melodic heavy metal band with a number of very heavy riffs. A number of songs venture into the prog metal territory with off-beat rhythms and some proggy keyboards. After the first 2 "real" songs that are solid melodic songs with some nice riffing and good vocals, I became very bored with the remainder of Dirt Metal. I definitely think we could have used some power metal influence or even some melodic guitar solos. Quite often the song seem to call for a melodic solo, but nope, back to the heavy riffing. I just think the songwriting is very sub par on this release with the exception of the first couple of songs.