DESTRUCTOR - Back in the day, with Iannicca (right)

Twenty-two years have passed since Cleveland power metal legends Destructor released its debut album, Maximum Destruction. But fans who pick up their newly released second album, Forever in Leather, will swear that no time has passed at all, and that's the way the band likes it. You'll find no radio ballads or post-nü-metal melodrama here. Titles like "Skullsplitter," "Unleashed" and "Pounding Warriors" say it all.

"Basically, we picked up where we left off," says singer-guitarist Dave "Overkill" Just. "I don't foresee anybody saying, "Wow, you guys have really changed a lot.' We're following our hearts and we're not going to try to be modern or different. I think it's just a stronger release than things we did in the past because we're better at what we do."

Few Cleveland band narratives are as full of glory and tragedy as that of Destructor. It was just over 25 years ago that local heavy metal maven Bill Peters, who'd recently started his Auburn Records, dropped in at the Pop Shop, a small club underneath the old Agora on East 24th Street. There he spotted the young Euclid band playing its first public show ever. Barely out of their teens, the quartet had plenty of rough edges, but it also had boundless energy and a certain "it" factor. Destructor was clearly headed for bigger things than playing basement bars in Cleveland.

Peters signed them and released Maximum Destruction in 1985. A heady blast of unalloyed power metal, it became the label's best-selling disc, with tunes like the title track, "Pounding Evil," "Destructor" and "Hot Wet Leather" all classics of their type. Even more crucial, Just, guitarist Pat "Rabid" Wolowiecki, bassist Dave "Holocaust" Iannicca and drummer Matt "Flammable" Schindelar had the key ingredient for heavy metal stardom: a blitzkrieg of a live show.

After the band made a major impact on the local scene, Peters engineered a deal between Auburn and national label Island Records, and Destructor was supposed to be their first joint project. The group was in the studio recording when Iannicca was murdered on January 1, 1988 by a party-crasher at a New Year's Eve gathering. And though Island initially told the band to take its time and regroup, ultimately Island abandoned them.

"That kind of adversity, those kind of hurdles, just broke the spirit of Destructor," recalls Overkill. "Not only losing Dave who was such a good friend and an important part of the band but the fact that Island Records just basically said, "next.' It just started the snowball effect of, this is going down."

Destructor limped on, trying to replace Iannicca but finding it too soon to let go. Flammable left in 1990, and Overkill and Rabid threw in the towel in 1992, sitting out the peak years of grunge and nü metal.

"We were going on an almost permanent vacation; at least that's how it seemed at the time," says Overkill. "Music had changed so much; we didn't really believe there was an interest or market for what we had to offer anymore. When we finally hung up our leathers, at that moment I was relieved. It was that coming to terms with reality, really."

But those leathers just wouldn't stay in the closet. In 1999, two things occurred to get the band going again: France's Listenable records reissued Maximum Destruction, reawakening the band's always-devoted European fan base, and Peters, who had put Auburn on hiatus for almost a decade, revived the label.

"Out of the blue I did this interview with a German magazine called Snake Pit," says Overkill. "It was a "What happened to you guys?' type of interview. And the next thing I know I was receiving some phone calls from some labels that had some interest in reissuing Maximum. So at that point I called Pat and said, "I think we need to put

Destructor back together again.' Pat had some resistance. We weren't sure if Matt was going to be in it, and who we were going to find on bass. It took a little bit of convincing but we got Matt to agree, "hey, let's get together, write some songs, do a show, see what's going to happen.'"

In 2002, the band found the missing link in ex-Boulder bassist Jamie Walters who, as a 13-year-old, attended the last show Holocaust played with Destructor at Peabody's Down Under in December 1987. They released the Sonic Bullet EP in 2003 and that June finally made it over to Europe to play at one of Germany's many metal festivals, Bang Your Head. They returned last year, and next year, they've been booked to play Germany's Wacken Open Air, which Peters describes as "the Super Bowl of all heavy metal festivals."

"It was a dream come true," says Overkill of playing Bang Your Head. "Before we went over there we thought, "well, at least we're going to have some sort of existence in the underground.' But when we got to Germany, there were literally thousands of people that knew who we are and know what we're all about, [and] by the end of our two gigs, we were like, "my god, the potential here is just unbelievable.' It was pretty fantastic feeling, especially after all the years of things gone wrong for us and trying so hard and not bearing any fruit from our efforts that that right there was a turning point. We're like, "yeah, we're back in the game here; we're going to write another record. It's time to play.'"

Still, nothing ever seems to come easily or quickly for Destructor, and neither did Forever in Leather. They wrote a batch of songs in 2004 and went back in the studio, but there were recording problems and the band started over. In the interim it released another EP, Storm of Steel, as a sort of teaser. The final CD was produced by old friend Don DePew of fellow Auburn act Breaker.

"Working with Don is a treat," says Overkill. "He's a cool guy and really understands how to get what we're looking for. I think it's the best production we've had. The production serves the songs really well. Technology has changed a lot since the '80s. A lot of those records were thin. Now you get a dynamic charge."

Re-energized, the guys are looking ahead at all the things they want to do now. They're already working on material for another album and gigging more, including an East Coast tour last year with Piledriver and regional gigs in cities like Detroit and Chicago. They're planning to reissue Maximum Destruction on Auburn. And the rise of the Internet and MySpace has allowed them to cement ties with their European fan base and communicate with fans all over the world.

"With MySpace, we thought at first it's kind of corny but it's the best real-time way to be talking with friends and fans all over the world," says Overkill. "It used to take months with mail. We're in communication with people from Bulgaria and France and Poland, Finland, Germany of course, Greece, South America - there's a huge metal community in countries like Brazil, Mexico. It's a cool thing to get a communication from someone in a far corner of the world. That's the payoff for putting in all this time."

"It's been a lifetime of dedication, that's for sure," he continues. "Things are finally starting to go our way. We're getting some festivals and our disc will hopefully have the best distribution yet so we can reach more people. And hopefully [Wacken] will expose us to a lot of people who don't know about us and take us to the next level. It's fun to be in middle of it."