D-A-D - Speed of Darkness (2024)

Country: Denmark
Style: Hard Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 4 Oct 2024
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I remember D-A-D from way back in the day, starting when they were still called Disneyland After Dark. They put out some excellent albums, though the one I played the most is the one you might expect, their 1989 breakthrough album, No Fuel Left for the Pilgrims. I never forgot where they throw the best damn parties and trawled Rim of Hell out to be played when I joined Chris Franklin in the Raised on Rock studios a couple of years ago. I completely failed to notice that, unlike most bands from the eighties, they never split up and only ever changed line-up once, swapping drummers in 1999. This is their thirteenth studio album.

It starts out how I might expect, with some real Aerosmith swagger on God Prays to Man and 1st, 2nd & 3rd. There's more of that to come, not least on Live by Fire, with a Mama Kin feel to it, and Waiting is the Way, which is angry Aerosmith with some pop punk in the chorus, but there's much more here than just one influence, even if it's an expected one.

I'll skip over The Ghost for now, because it stands alone on this album, both in style and quality, as the song that both impressed me most on a first listen and yet continued to grow with subsequent listens. I'll jump forward to Speed of Darkness instead, which sets a few other influences in play. It kicks off with a grungy riff, like Nirvana covering Black Sabbath, but then shifts into a mellow Red Hot Chili Peppers vibe. Before long, it does both at once, with is interesting to say the very least. There's a gorgeous guitar solo here, from one of the Binzer brothers, probably Jacob, and it isn't the last of those. There's another on I'm Still Here that puts him even more in the spotlight as he plays.

I'm Still Here takes the same mellow Chili Peppers approach and so does Head Over Heels, which adds some of the country that they used to play back in their earliest days. Then again, I recently watched The Charismatic Voice pointing out that Under the Bridge was almost a country song in vocal style, so maybe it came with the territory and muscle memory kicked in. That means that we now have sassy glam-infused hard rock, grungy stoner rock, mellow alt rock and country, all mixed together in ways that sound entirely natural for this band.

Strange Terrain relies on that grungy stoner country vibe. In My Hands does the same thing, with a touch more grunge and distortion for good measure. Jesper Binzer's voice is surely manipulated in post-production for effect. Everything is Gone Now ditches the country and makes the stoner rock more commercial to become a bouncy grunge song. Automatic Survival cuts back on the distortion and plays up that bounce to remind of the glam rock that started out the album. This one became my second highlight because it's more thoughtful than God Prays to Man or 1st, 2nd & 3rd and, like The Ghost, it's a real grower, getting better on every listen.

And, speaking of The Ghost, I'll jump back to that now that you have a strong idea of the flavours that pervade this album. I initially got a new wave vibe out of it, albeit played entirely with rock instrumentation rather than electronica, but it got more alternative as I listened to it again and again. I find the guitarwork especially fascinating, given that it sounds more and more like early U2 covering the Sisters of Mercy. It's a haunting piece that, like Automatic Survival, just keeps on getting better with every listen.

There are other songs here too, because most of them aren't long and they just keep on coming. I actually started to wonder on my first listen, before I took many notes, whether I'd left the album on repeat by accident and I hadn't paid enough attention to remember the tracks that were on a second time through. It turns out that I was only fifty minutes in, partway through the final song, so I'd effectively told myself that it feels like a longer album than it is. In reality, there are merely a lot of songs, fourteen in all, most ranging from just shy of three minutes to not much over four, the one exception being Automatic Survival, which milks its groove until five and change.

It looks like the band are talking up the album as their best in a while and, for once, they might be right and not just spinning their latest record as best they can to the press. I've heard that line on far too many occasions from bands who have completely lost the plot to take it as read. The single reason I can't back them up is that I haven't heard their previous few albums to compare. What I'd be happy to add is that this sounds like the D-A-D I remember but matured by a few decades to be wary of being pigeonholed. They take each of these songs where they feel they should go and, for the most part, I'm not going to argue with their decisions, with a little punk here, a little country there and even a bit of surf for good measure.

Here's where I'd say welcome back, but D-A-D have never been away, so instead I'll say well caught up to myself. I may well have missed some good stuff over the past couple of decades. I hope that you haven't.

Panzerchrist - All Witches Shall Burn (2024)

Country: Denmark
Style: Black/Death Metal
Rating: 6/10
Release Date: 5 Jan 2024
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | Wikipedia

Panzerchrist have been around for a long time, formed in 1993 and with a steady stream of studio albums, seven of them between 1996 and 2013. They play death metal that's blackened massively, so it's fair to expect plenty of both those genres from them. It took them ten years to knock out an eighth album, Last of a Kind, which I completely missed last July when I was swamped with events. That may be because of line-up issues, because there are only two long-standing members in the band nowadays.

That's Michael Enevoldsen, who founded Panzerchrist, but changed roles within it over time. His initial instrument was drums, which he played on their first two albums, and he also contributed keyboards. He isn't even on their third album, Soul Collector, though he wrote half the songs, but he switched to bass at that point, which he still plays to this day, keeping keyboards as a side role. Frederik O'Carroll is on his second stint with the band, but he's put in over a couple of decades in total. Everyone else joined in 2023, so were brand new on Last of a Kind.

That's Danny Bo Pedersen on guitar, Sonja Rosenlund Ahl on vocals and Danni Jelsgaard on drums, though he left the same year and has been replaced going forward by Ove Lungskov. I'm guessing that Pedersen and Ahl came as a double act, after their previous band, Arsenic Addict, split up in 2022. Both are strong here, with Ahl perhaps most obvious, not least because she also happens to be the first female lead singer Panzerchrist have had across a whole series of vocalists.

I haven't heard Last of a Kind, but I'm rather intrigued by it now, because this EP moves through a heck of a lot of territory. Sabbath of the Rat is what I expect from them, furious drumming over a set of chord progressions from the guitars and raw vocals leading the way. It's a good opener and it features an elegent slower section in the second half. This song is on Last of a Kind, though I'm not aware of whether this version is changed in any way, given that it isn't the EP's title track. In fact, there isn't one, so it feels like a deliberately varied presentation without focus being meant to be given to any one of the tracks.

That variety comes in with Stone of the Graveless, which starts out pure industrial then adds slow and heavy riffs over the top. This is doom metal at the front but industrial at the back, with Ahl a breathy death metal voice over the top of it all. It's unusual and, even before the band moved on to two further tracks that do different things, I started to think about Celtic Frost, not because it sounds like them but because, like they famously did, it feels like Panzerchrist are choosing to do exactly what they want to do, whether people expect it or not.

Stone for the Graveless does speed up, with a fascinating mix of fast double bass pedals and slow beats, but it retains a somewhat different feel, especially as the industrial sound never entirely leaves. It takes over again early in the second half and, while it's hard to tell, I think it remains in place even when the furious drumming kicks in over the top. The guitar gets more interesting in the second half too. Eventually, with a minute or so left, it becomes more traditional for a while, but it never stays there. There's always something interesting coming.

And, as if by magic, Satan is Among Us is something else that's interesting. It opens almost like an avant-garde classical piece, dissonant strings and dancing flutes. The drums bring in the band and we're back off and running, with Jelsgaard's frantic feet and Ahl's raucous voice. Again, the tempo is never a set thing and it continues to evolve over its five minutes. Stone for the Graveless passed six and is really starting to grow on me. This one isn't as much, as the changes seem clumsier. I'm pretty sure there's a male voice joining in at points to duet but I'm not seeing a credit for one, so it may all be Ahl. She certainly has the range for it to be her throughout.

She's a Witch wraps up the EP and it's the point at which the keyboards start to show themselves, with an atmospheric horror movie type intro. Ahl actually sings on this one, rather than relying on her death growl, and it starts to feel a little like a theatrical setup that someone like Alice Cooper might use as a live show intro, with a quirky female voice and a church organ. What surprises here is that the intro runs on past a minute, two minutes, three minutes and we suddenly realise that there's not much left, so this is what we're getting. It's the song.

So, there's a serious versatility here, well beyond what we might expect from a blackened death metal band. I'm suddenly intrigued by what might be on Last of a Kind, noting that the one song here that's also on there is the one and only traditional piece on offer. Maybe the other three are what the band created during their sessions for the album and realised weren't ever going to fit. Maybe the album sounds this thoroughly diverse. I may have to go back and find out. I'm going to go with a 6/10 here, but that's because it doesn't feel particularly coherent and because the first two songs seem to be in a different league to the second two.

Ronnie Atkins - Trinity (2023)

Country: Denmark
Style: Melodic/Hard Rock
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 13 Oct 2023
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Wikipedia

It's become clear over the past couple of years that any new album from Ronnie Atkins is likely to be a real highlight and he's keeping up the consistency. I gave a 9/10 to his solo debut, One Shot, as one of my albums of the year. The follow up, Make It Count, and this third album, fall a little short of that masterpiece but not by much. They're still both highly recommended 8/10s from me.

This one starts out like it wants that 9/10 rating. The title track is a very strong opener indeed and Ode to a Madman isn't far behind it. They may well be a little heavier than the previous albums, so firmly hard rock rather than melodic/hard rock, but not by a lot, even with a teasing hint of a harsh voice behind Atkins at the end of the latter song. It's the drive of these songs that makes them the highlights of the album, because they both find a powerful groove and milk it capably for four and a half minutes each.

Just in case he's heavied up a little too much, Paper Tiger reduces the intensity level and includes woah woah sections, so it doesn't have quite the same impact, but it's a good song nonetheless, a delicious level of grit in Atkins's voice on this one. Soul Divine is a ballad and that's all I need to say about that. If you like Ronnie singing ballads, then you'll like this one. That means that we've had a couple of rockers where the band—whoever's in it nowadays—crank up the energy and a couple more where they bring it back a little. Then it gets interesting.

I found it hard to pick a favourite song because the three obvious candidates are so different. That opening title track is one and If You Can Dream It (You Can Do It) is a second, as the most stripped down, back to basics melodic rocker here. It's so obviously single material that it's familiar on the first listen, so immediate that I was singing along on the first chorus. It's highly effective and also very uplifting, as its title suggests, without ever getting cheesy. The third, however, is a different song again. It's Godless, but there's also a highly evocative ninety second intro before it called Via Dolorosa, which was the route through Jerusalem that Jesus walked to be crucified.

If that suggests weightier material than something as simplistic as If You Can Dream It (You Can Do It), then you'd be right. It starts out with a middle eastern vibe in the way that Rainbow often did, but it has a much more contemporary feel to it, almost a hint at industrial during the verses, albeit with all the rough edges filed carefully off because this is rooted in melodic rock. It prowls and stalks and there's some sort of processing done to Atkins's voice during the verses to make it even more memorable. It's an interesting sound and it's an infectious song.

Everything else sits a level behind these highlights, with Ode to a Madman maybe a nudge above as the closest to them. However, nothing lets the side down and there's something to every song that makes it a worthy inclusion, even Shine, which suffers from following Godless. It was always a good song and it has a particularly well crafted bridge, but it struggles to, well, shine, after a gem like Godless that does things differently. However, listen to it in isolation and it has no problem in telling us how good it is. It was here that I realised just how good this album was.

There's a nice bounce to Sister Sinister. Raining Fire has a real swagger to it. Paper Tiger is slick as it gets. The Unwanted feels like commercial Blue Öyster Cult. What If wraps up the album with an overt touch of musical theatre. None of them stand out for me personally but every one of them has something that could make it your favourite. That's the sign of a damn good album, meaning that it's three absolute gems out of three for Ronnie Atkins, who's always been a fantastic singer and songwriter but who is making it look so easy nowadays. Any singer or band playing melodic or hard rock nowadays ought to go to sleep and dream about being this good.

Mike Tramp - Songs of White Lion (2023)

Country: Denmark
Style: Hard Rock
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 14 Apr 2023
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | Twitter | Wikipedia

The most recent Mike Tramp release I reviewed here at Apocalypse Later was an album of original pop songs, For Første Gang, which he sang in his native Danish, that only rarely felt like trawling in rock. It was the one before that, Second Time Around, that comes to mind here because it was a re-recording of a 2009 album called Mike Tramp & The Roll 'n' Roll Circuz, with all the same musicians, possibly because it was only previously released in Denmark and, hey, maybe there was some sort of rights or ownership issue. That's why Taylor Swift is re-recording all of her early albums.

This is another album that's like that, because it's a look back at the catalogue of White Lion, that late eighties band that brought him most success, with re-recordings of select songs, including the bigger hits. What's especially odd here is that he's done it before, with 1999's Remembering White Lion, which has seen release under a number of different titles too. There are five crossovers that are both on this album and that one, though the musicians are all brand new again, meaning that on those particular songs, Tramp is re-recording a re-recording with a third version of White Lion. Why, I have no idea.

The good news is that it all sounds great. White Lion were usually classified as glam metal, but the sound they had was always firmly rooted in hard rock and this is a more overtly hard rock take. The opening of Lady of the Valley feels like metal, all Marcus Nand guitars, but it softens up a lot more than the original and it doesn't just benefit from 21st century production values. Tramp's voice is wonderful here, as clear as ever but with a delightful hint of age. It's been a while since 1987 and I believe he's continued to mature that voice ever since. Maybe there's the answer. He wants to see those old songs sung by the voice that he has now and I can't blame him for that.

Lady of the Valley is one of the highlights here for me. I remember Pride from its original release, but I was getting more and more into thrash and other proto-extreme metal at the time and so my sister would have listened to it a lot more than I did. It's the most represented White Lion album in this retrospective, with five tracks redone compared to four from Big Game, a couple from Fight to Survive and only one from Mane Attraction. It prompts me to go back to the originals but that just highlights how these do sound better. Production has moved on and the only expectations now are Tramp's, not his record label's. The ending on this one sounds even more like Mountain and it does not fade out this time.

I remember Pride being a big album and Big Game followed suit. It shouldn't shock that the songs here from those albums sound good. What surprised me the most about this is that two of my five highlights are the pair from their debut, Fight to Survive. I'm sure that I heard that album back in the day but I don't remember it at all, just the two that came after it. Clearly I should check it out afresh because Broken Heart stands out here, playing like a heavier Bryan Adams song, if he had taken up hard rock, and All the Fallen Men is even better, heavier again with a neatly churning riff. I woke up this morning with this one playing in my head. Tramp relishes both.

I should highlight that Broken Heart opened up Fight to Survive and my other two highlights were also album openers, so suggesting that I like emphatic White Lion songs rather than ballads, which were a good part of their repertoire. Other fans may well go for hit singles like Wait and When the Children Cry first, but it's apparently the openers that get me going. Hungry opened up Pride and Goin' Home Tonight opened up Big Game. Everything else was apparently a bonus in my book. It's perhaps telling that Lady of the Valley wasn't an opener in 1987 but is here and it's easily the best song on the album for me.

I should confirm that those bigger hits sound good too, just in case you wondered if they didn't sit well with taste a few decades on. When the Children Cry is particularly strong, which is why it's at the tail end of the album to wrap it up, as indeed it did on Pride. Tramp's voice sounds fantastic on this version. Listening to the original, he was clearly trying for an effect and the fact that it was so popular merely suggests that he nailed it. Here, he's not trying for anything, that effect is simply there in his voice. There's a lot to be said for the flexibility of young voices but there's just as much to be said for the maturity of old voices that have been there and done that, but not broken. Nand provides a huge solo too, that's all the more effective for the contrast of soaring over a soft piano.

It's a bit of a cheat to give this an 8/10, given that it's effectively a best of album that reaps some benefits that a traditional best of album wouldn't have. Sure, they did it right, which is important, but it ought to be this good. White Lion were an underrated band in the eighties, painted into one of those media-friendly buckets that never quite fit them, and they're well worth checking out. It's fair to say that this would be a good starting point because of the better production and because Tramp's voice has never been better.

Mike Tramp - For Første Gang (2022)

Country: Denmark
Style: Melodic Rock
Rating: 6/10
Release Date: 2 Sep 2022
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | Twitter | Wikipedia

Mike Tramp is probably still best known for being the singer in glam metal band White Lion, but it wasn't his first band and it wasn't his last either, as he moved into Freak of Nature, who were very good indeed. He's been putting out solo albums for the last couple of decades but I've only heard the most reent one, Second Time Around, which contained re-recordings of songs previously on his 2009 album, Mike Tramp & The Rock 'n' Roll Circuz. It was decent stuff, firmly on the lighter side of classic rock, reminding of people like Jon Bon Jovi, Bruce Springsteen or John Cougar Mellencamp. It ended up averaged out to a heavy Bryan Adams sound.

This one, on the other hand, averages out to a light James Taylor sound. There are only ballads on offer and they range from Eurovision-style pop ballads to, well, not much heavier rock ballads. The best is probably the opener, Det Jeg Var, which could be a rock song if it wanted to be—it doesn't—and kept on growing on me. It didn't seem like much to start with, but I may have just needed to adjust, given that I've been listening to Behemoth and Amon Amarth, and get back into a melodic rock mindset. Halfway through, I was really digging it and, by the end, I'd started humming along.

For a while, it worked for me. Vejkort is infectious too, another rock song and one with guitars, an occasion worthy of note here because the most frequent instrument here beyond Tramp's voice is a piano. It also has oddly sticky sounding drums to keep a beat, again not something to take at all for granted here, as the drums fade in importance with the album until they're gone entirely on a closer, called Album, that places Tramp against piano and a mist of orchestration. I can't say that I didn't enjoy the soft brass that takes both Album—the song—and the album, home, but I'd expect it more on an early seventies Tom Waits release.

It's worth mentioning here that one important angle both works for me and doesn't and that's an entirely Danish lyric sheet. Tramp's prior dozen solo albums were all recorded in English but this is entirely in his native Danish. From a vocal standpoint, that's great because, as good as he sounds in a foreign tongue, there's a level of intonation in play that's difficult to find unless a language is completely second nature and has been since being a toddler. He sounds amazing here, better yet than usual. The catch is that I have no idea what he's singing, because I don't speak Danish, and it would seem that the words are important here. They certainly were for Tom Waits.

So, without knowing what the words mean, and assuming that they're rather meaningful, I have to rely on the music and that's tough here because it just isn't the focus. Whoever's performing here does the job they're asked to do, so I have no complaints. It's just that this album is all about voice and, to a much lesser degree, solo piano, and, while I can happily soothe an evening away with one of Suzanne Ciani's Pianissimo releases, I can't even dip into that listening mode here. I'm missing one of the most important angles to the album.

And that means that the second half fades for me until that brass shows up on Album and the first half shifts away from me with the title track. For Første Gang For Altid is much softer than the two openers, being a ballad that feels romantic to me. It's the most Eurovision song here, not only for its soft pop/rock ballad approach but because there's disco creeping in around the edges and ooh and aah backing vocals. They'd have lapped this up in the seventies, as indeed they did when Mike Tramp was the lead singer for pop band Mabel, who won the Danish Song Contest in 1978. It's not my sort of thing though.

And, as good as this is from a subjective standpoint, it really ends up firmly on the not my sort of thing list. I really enjoyed hearing Tramp's voice again and especially hearing it sing in his native language, but this may be the softest album I've ever reviewed and it may remain that way. I liked Det Jeg Var and Jeg Holder Fast and I'd actually put them both above Vejkort, which is as heavy as this album gets, not much of a bar in the same way that I'm sure there's a most brutal Tellytubby but it's not likely to be fronting a street gang, but the rest would seem light even for fans of Bryan Adams.

Heilung - Drif (2022)

Country: Germany/Denmark/Norway
Style: Experimental Folk
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 19 Aug 2022
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Official Website | Wikipedia

If you haven't heard Heilung before, you should because a) they're a treat for the ears and b) you probably haven't heard anything like them before. They're variously described as a folk group, an experimental metal band and a ritual collective. They call themselves "amplified history", adding "from early medieval Northern Europe", but they've expanded far beyond that boundary, as one piece here ably highlights. It's called Nikkal and it's the oldest annoted music known to man, over three thousand years old and composed as a hymn to a Sumerian goddess. Nikkal was the wife of the moon god.

Really, they're just Heilung, because their sound is rarely comparable to anyone else. At the heart of what they do are the versatile voices of a couple of vocalists, a German tattoo artist called Kai Uwe Faust and a Norwegian prog rock singer named Maria Franz. Behind them on an orchestra of unusual instrumentation is Danish producer Christopher Juul and, between them, they conjure up a wild array of fascinating sounds. There are guests here too, a bunch of them, but I have no data to suggest what they do, so I'll just acknowledge that and move on.

Drif is their third studio album and its title means "gathering", a term that could be aptly applied to both the variety in the pieces of music on offer and to the cultures from which they're sourced. I believe most are sung in Proto-Norse, language so old that part of it cannot be translated, merely pronounced. Or maybe that's just a problem the internet has in attempting to render Heilung into English, so we can see that the opening song here, for instance, Asja, is a healing song, just as the band's name means healing.

My least favourite piece is in German, which is the eight minute epic right at the heart of Drif. I'll describe Keltentrauer as being performed because it's neither sung nor spoken, at least how you're probably imagining that meaning in a review. There's nothing wrong with it and it's highly evocative, but it also happens to be a poem delivered in German against accompanying music and sound effects of battle. It plays as a memorable experience the first time through but, unless we speak German, it turns into an overblown intro to a Manowar epic ongoing. I soon found myself skipping it. There's still a full fifty minutes of joy here without it.

I doubt many of us understand any of the other lyrics either but, unlike Keltentrauer where words are key to telling a story, it just doesn't matter on everything else. The music speaks volumes and we can tap into the mood and sentiment of each piece without problems, whether it's ethereal or aggressive. The ritual nature of some of them, with its inevitably repetitive chants may turn off a few listeners but anyone who feels music as much as they listen to it will fall into this album and be consumed by it, emerging a different person at the end.

It starts out gloriously with a piece called Asja. Faust delivers ritual throat singing with Rs heavily rolled and a beautifully resonant vibrato. Juul adds a slow beat to match the delivery of words. At first, the backing vocals are harsh and demonic but then Franz joins in with her high and ethereal melodic voice. This is a haka of a song, but one that grows as enticing as it is threatening. Anoana is just as tight and deliberate and it gives a serious effect. Franz has a very different approach on this one, shifting down octaves and moving down in the mix too. Faust is different as well, lighter and much more playful, in a back and forth conversational chant with himself.

These are resonant piees of music. Tenet is too but it gets strange. It starts out like a vocabulary lesson for kids, in palindromic form, then adds deep horns and mad growls and finally shifts into a humming motion to start the song proper. Urbani begins with what sound like crowing cockerels, before turning into a sort of military march or a piece recorded in an African village on a portable tape recorded by a roaming ethnomusicographer.

I found the first half magnetic from the outset but the second half took me a while. Nesso is quite the puzzle, because it features fascinating sounds that we can't ignore. Is that Faust or someone walking on gravel? Is that Franz or a musical bowl used like a bell? Maybe they're all conjurings of Juul using one of his esoteric instruments. Buslas Bann is a hypnotic chant with a deep male vocal that feels more repetitive than earlier ritual pieces and Franz doesn't show up.

And then we get to Nikkal, which I adore. The voices blend wonderfully and I just wish it was longer but it is what it is. We can't complain to the unknown composer, who's been dead for millennia. It's used here as a kind of intro to the closing epic, Marduk, during which Faust recites the fifty names of the Babylonian god of that name, in a ritual whisper against the backdrop of chimes and bowls. All I know here is that it isn't done in the order in the Necronomicon and it features more of those amazing rolling Rs. The side benefits of having a German vocalist!

Everything here is fascinating. Only Keltentrauer feels out of place and then perhaps only if you aren't fluent in German.

Ronnie Atkins - Make It Count (2022)

Country: Denmark
Style: Melodic/Hard Rock
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 18 Mar 2022
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Wikipedia

My gaps this year for COVID and research trips and whatnot have put me behind on some releases that I don't want to miss, so I'm going to knock out a bunch throughout August. This one came out in March, a year to the week since Ronnie Atkins's previous (and first) solo album, One Shot, which got a rare 9/10 from me and was just about a coin toss from being my Album of the Month. It was a peach of a melodic/hard rock album and this really isn't far behind it. The man has always been an immense talent, as his forty years for Pretty Maids have proven, but he simply can't do any wrong right now, even though he has stage four lung cancer and is living day to day.

The songs just keep on coming. I've Hurt Myself (By Hurting You) is a pristine opener in the patent Ronnie Atkins fashion, which means that it's a hook-laden song that's clearly all about melody but doesn't skimp on the oomph behind it. There are AOR songs written for maximum appeal on radio that don't have hooks this strong or this numerous and they usually don't have the power behind them that this does. It's so good that we wonder how Atkins will follow it up.

So he throws out Unsung Heroes, which is easily as good and might even be better. Then it's Rising Tide and Remain to Remind Me and we start to wonder when we're going to hear something that, never mind average, might be just a notch down in quality. What's perhaps most telling is that, on the few songs where we think we've found that, they build into killer choruses that we can imagine might warrant them becoming our new favourite. Maybe the quality finally dips on Grace, which is the beginning of the second side, were this a vinyl album. And that's a pretty damn good song! It's the sort of track that some bands have been trying and failing to record for years. Here it's a drop from holy crap to merely excellent.

Easily my least favourite song is the next one, Let Love Lead the Way, not because it's a ballad and just a ballad, not really even a power ballad until its second half, but because of keyboard tinkling that spoils the first half for me and doesn't quite vanish during the second. Blood Cries Out starts with keyboards too and they don't quite convince me. The songs ramps up nicely—and I mean that with bells on—just not to become another new favourite, that mindset being confined to the first half of the album.

The line-up is pretty consistent with that on One Shot, with producer Chris Laney providing guitars and keyboards, as indeed he does in Pretty Maids nowadays, Pontus Egberg on bass and a pair of former Pretty Maids colleagues on drums and keyboards, those being Allan Sørensen and Morten Sandager respectively. There are guests too, mostly on guitar, but I don't recognise all the names. Pontus Norgren is certainly a guitarist for HammerFall nowadays; Oliver Hartmann is a busy man who fronts Hartmann and guests on what seems like every other European album being released; and Anders Ringman co-wrote a Lovecraftian rock opera with Chris Laney.

I took those notes on my second listen through and I've had a couple more since, enough that I am comfortable saying that the thoroughly consistent first half of this is worthy of another 9/10, not a typical thing for me to say. However, the second half definitely drops in quality, not to the point of being a problem for someone wanting to just listen but easily enough to affect that score. It's less consistent, both in approach and quality, but it's still dotted with greatness. Blood Cries Out gets there eventually and the title ballad that closes out the album is epic grandeur even before it hits the power disco escalation button halfway through.

So this isn't quite another One Shot, ironically given that name, but it comes damn close for half a dozen tracks and finishes out with style too. The lesson we should take from these albums is that if we see the name of Ronnie Atkins on anything, it's going to sound amazing. At this point, he could sing the phone book and make other singers and songwriters jealous. All the best for a strong and lasting recovery, sir, and I look forward to another album from you next March.

Evil - Book of Evil (2022)

Country: Denmark
Style: Heavy Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 27 May 2022
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By sheer coincidence, Evil became quite the topic of conversation online recently, when a playlist for a Friday Rock Show was shared in our Facebook group. That dates back to 1984, the track being played Evils Message/Evil, from what was a pretty hard to get 12" EP on Rave-On Records, but people remembered it in glowing terms. One made his first trip to the legendary Shades shop in London and bought it with Metallica's Creeping Death.

Of course, the logical next question is "What happened to them?" Well, they split up after that EP but got back together in 2007, with a new vocalist. However, by the time their long overdue debut album came out in 2015, it had become a one man band, with drummer Freddie Wolf contributing all the music himself, the only other musician involved a guest vocalist. They're a band again now, though Wolf is the only returning member and he's switched from drums to guitar. Whew.

And they sound really good, though I have to add that there's some nostalgia in that opinion. It's fair to say that there's little new in their sound, though it has changed somewhat over the years. This is still rooted in NWOBHM, for all that they're Danish, and the other obvious influences date back as far or almost as far. This is still unashamedly old school heavy metal, with a side of power metal, though the influences come intriguingly from both sides of the Atlantic; it's not as solidly European as I would have expected.

For instance, while the most obvious names springing to mind are Iron Maiden and Mercyful Fate, Divine Conspiracy opens with a Metal Church groove and there's a Metallica crunch to the guitars throughout. Vocalist Martin Steene clearly idolises Bruce Dickinson, but there are points where he shifts into a Geoff Tate style and others where he moves more to Michael Kiske, with only a few moments with a nod to the famous King Diamond falsetto. Similarly, the guitars are heavy/power but often think about ramping up to thrash speeds. They never do, I should add, but they think about it a lot.

There are songs that feel European, like the opener proper, Divine Conspiracy, that often sounds like Dickinson singing for Mercyful Fate. There are also songs that feel American, like King of the Undead, the most Metallica song here. Many of them shift back and forth, combining a European sense of melody, often nodding towards Rage or Primal Fear, with a more American tone, a Metal Church sense of menace. For instance, Sanctuary starts out Metal Church but shifts into European power metal as it grows, even adding some Uriah Heep moments to go even older school.

And, eventually, it gets to Evils Message, which I presume is the only old song here, one reworked from that 1984 EP. There's certainly nothing else here from that or from the debut and, while the style is predominantly old school, the songs somehow feel like they were written more recently. I have to say that Evils Message, with its intricate instrumental passages, is still the standout here, which kind of underlines how this is not a great new album from a band eager to live up to a long anticipated promise. However, it's still a good one, if you're into this sort of thing. I've had it on a repeat cycle for about three days and I haven't tired of it in the slightest.

What I think they need to do is to think more epic. That's a feel that's inherent in everything they do, but it comes out more on longer songs like Evils Message and the album's closer, Book of Evil, not least because it includes some closing narration to complement the intro. Those songs run for seven and a half minutes each and they're highlights, reminding both of epic Maiden (Alexander the Great came to mind a few times on the title track) and of more Diamond Head time changes. However, the rest only last three or four minutes each and I wonder if they'd all be better off with more time dedicated to solos and more complex songwriting. Sure, Evils Message has a killer riff to elevate it, but that's not all it has.

I'm going to take this as a very promising return of an obscure but well remembered Danish band and the groundwork needed to move forward. A more ambitious follow up release in two or three years would be very welcome indeed. There's a 9/10 album in this band, I can feel it. It merely isn't this one.

Volbeat - Servant of the Mind (2021)

Country: Denmark
Style: Hard Rock/Heavy Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 3 Dec 2021
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Volbeat have been around for more than two decades now and this is their eighth studio album. I hadn't heard them before their previous effort, though, Rewind, Replay, Rebound, and it's fair to say that I was very surprised. What surprised me was their sound or, rather, that they don't have a single sound, instead shifting entirely unconcerned between three very different sounds, with an alternative rock voice singing over them throughout. I heard safe alternative rock, rockabilly and groove metal, not styles I'd usually expect to hear performed by one band on one album.

Well, it shouldn't be too surprising to find that they do the same thing here, though it's still more apparent when they shift from one style another during the same song, Mindlock starting out in chugging Metallica territory but turning gradually into the sort of safe alternative rock they play at bowling alleys. To be fair, there are some really interesting combinations on this one that look at new areas of rock music. The Passenger kicks off with a Motörhead rhythm section, but is sung more like punk pop. Step into Light is a soft pop song interpreted through a punky take on surf.

The most interesting song on the album is The Sacred Stones, which starts out as traditional heavy metal, threating to go full on doom but never quite taking that dare. It becomes a slow Dio track, but with Michael Poulsen's alt rock voice attempting to master Dio's recognisable intonation and breaks without changing too much. Parts of it remind very much of Heaven and Hell, but there are odd moments when I thought they were going to launch into The Final Countdown. It softens later but comes back to that chugging Metallica sound. There's a lot to reconcile on this one.

Mostly, though, we stay in those three core sounds.

The dominant one this time is groove metal, though the downtuned groove style is turned down in favour of mainstream Black-era Metallica alt metal. This is the sound of Shotgun Blues, Say No More (complete with lyrics that tellingly include the words "Jump in the Fire") and the final three tracks, especially Lasse's Birgitta, which wraps up the album. It fascinates me that Volbeat are an abiding lesson to old school Metallica fans who are convinced that The Black Album was a sellout. Shotgun Blues is what it would have sounded like with a real shift in vocal style to alt rock. I dug it as a commercial rock/metal song, but I also missed James Hetfield's recognisable vocals.

The rockabilly sound is sidelined this time out, though it's there early on Wait a Minute My Girl, a song that feels like Cheap Trick covering Elvis Presley, especially with the horn section at the end. The Devil Rages On heavies that up, with a very deliberate accent on the vocals and a much darker psychobilly flavour to it that reminds of the Cramps. Heaven's Descent is the only song to find the Michale Graves-era Misfits vibe, something that became the norm on the last album, and it's a highlight here.

The third, safe alternative rock, sound is here too but shimmied up a little. Dagen Før is the most obvious example, because it starts out like Bryan Adams, only to heavy up a little. There's a guest appearance here of Stine Bramsen, lead singer for the Danish pop group Alphabeat. However, an array of other songs feature the alt rock sound deeper than just Poulsen's voice. Mindlock ends up there, Step into Light plays there and Temple of Ekur, the album's opener, feels like it was built in layers and Abba vocal melodies were the layer that identify it to the world. Sure, the music under them is clearly rock and rather heavy too, but it's still an Abba song at heart.

And, as on the last album, I can't help but wonder how fans respond to this bizarre combination of styles. Volbeat do all three well, but it still seems odd to me that they do each of them so often. If fans showed up to see Bad Brains, they'd have probably expected a reggae song to show up amidst all the punk, and they generally didn't have a problem with that, but most of them might not have been happy if they found reggae filling the entire set. The Wedding Present played in two utterly distinct styles, but they tended to do either one or the other in entirety, either their typical indie rock or Ukrainian folk music, rather than mixing them together. Not so Volbeat.

Artillery - X (2021)

Country: Denmark
Style: Thrash Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 7 May 2021
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It was Valentines Day in 1986 and, just like every other Friday evening during that era of my life, I was taping the Friday Rock Show on BBC Radio 1. Tommy Vance started out well with a classic by Saxon and a good new one from Ozzy and then he hit me with Time Has Come, taken from the Artillery debut on Neat Records, Fear of Tomorrow. The rest of the show was good, but I was blown away by the Artillery song and I remember raving to my mother, who didn't give a monkey's about rock or metal, about this fantastic new band I'd just discovered, as if I'd done something more than listen to a radio show.

Artillery were from Denmark, not the usual location for a thrash metal band in 1986. Everyone else, it seemed, was either from the Bay Area of San Francisco or from Germany, with some up and comers in the UK too. Denmark surprised me, but I quickly picked up Fear of Tomorrow from Groové Records and Terror Squad when that came out too, with its godawful hand drawn cover. I may not have played them to death like other favourite bands I found in 1986 like Nuclear Assault or Metal Church, but they were really good albums and it was a shame when Artillery ceased to be, after a third good album in 1990's By Inheritance.

Well, it seems that they've got back together twice, in 1998 for a few years, and again in 2007, when it stuck. This is their tenth album, as the title might suggest, with six of those ten coming from this new incarnation. They haven't changed line-up that often, all things considered, but, while three original members were at the heart of the 2007 reunion, only guitarist Michael Stützer remains now, because drummer Carsten Nielsen left in 2012 and Stützer's brother and fellow guitarist died in 2019. The first of two bonus tracks, The Last Journey, is a tribute to him.

So what do they sound like now? Well, the opener, The Devil's Symphony, kicks off just like high tempo thrash ought to, with a simple but effective intro and a neat transition to speed. There's nothing new in the first minute of this song, but it's done really well by a tight band who know what they're doing. When the vocals of Michael Bastholm Dahl kick in, they're clean and surprisingly melodic, with a clear nod to power metal that becomes more obvious as the album runs on. The middle section chugs nicely and then ramps back up to full speed for the solos. It's a good opener in the vein of older Megadeth, back when they were a thrash band.

As Megadeth increasingly did over time, though, this album gradually sheds the speed. It's still there for In Thrash We Trust, which I'm guessing would have been the title track if this wasn't an anniversary release. I like the drums of Josua Madsen here, because it often feels like he's pushing the band just a little, pressing them to stay fast and maybe add a little nitro to that. It's obvious that, as fast as they get, he's always comfortable and could take any of these songs to the next level whenever they're up for it. Turn Up the Rage isn't as fast as we might expect from that title, but it's still up tempo.

However, the longer the album runs on, the more Artillery seem content to play at what would seem fast for a heavy metal band but certainly not full speed for a thrash band, even if it isn't traditional chugging at mid pace. The Ghost of Me is easily the slowest and most radio friendly song here, made all the more obvious by Force of Indifference coming in fast and frantic on its heels, but the approach is clearly not to truly blister, even on a song where it could have happened. For every song that lets it rip, like Force of Indifference, there's another that just doesn't want to, like Varg I Veum.

Megadeth continue to be a fair comparison, as would some of the heavy power metal bands in Germany like Primal Fear or even Accept, but I caught plenty of heavy Iron Maiden in this sound too. It's there in the galloping drums, the interesting riffs (check out that middle eastern riff towards the end of Silver Cross, for example) and the operatic power metal vocal style of Dahl. Some of this would play pretty well as a follow up to the Powerslave album. It's surprising to find that the second bonus track is a decent cover of Trapped Under Ice, because there isn't much early Metallica here. That's at its most overt on In Your Mind, especially its intro, and some of the other intros and breakdowns.

This is a good album, perhaps a better one for its variety of tempos even if I kept wanting it to speed up, and it makes me want to pull out my copies of Fear of Tomorrow and Terror Squad, but also check out the other newer albums that the band have been releasing. This is the first for Kræn Meier, their new rhythm guitarist, but the fourth for Dahl and Madsen. Bass player Peter Thorslund was on their third and final album before they split up the first time, but didn't return for the brief incarnation at the turn of the millennium. I look forward to their next release. It's good to see them still in business.

Iotunn - Access All Worlds (2021)

Country: Denmark
Style: Progressive Melodic Death Metal
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 26 Feb 2021
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You might be forgiven for thinking, after a minute of the opening track, that Iotunn are a progressive rock band. The song is Voyage of the Garganey I and it sounds like they've been listening to a heck of a lot of Pink Floyd. Well, for that minute. You might also be forgiven for thinking, after another minute, that that was just an intro and they're really a melodic death metal band. Well, for that minute and a little more besides, until Jón Aldará's vocals switch completely, from death growl to clean and soaring and it's clear that they're all of these things at once and that means progressive metal above all.

Perhaps the key clue was in how clean they are when playing melodeath. They're clearly not trying for an evil death metal sound in any fashion and the result is never brutal. The production is crisp and the guitars aren't downtuned at all. There's death here, to be sure, but, if it was ever what drove Iotunn, they evolved past it. It's fair to suggest that this is a heavy album that doesn't actually feel heavy, as I was constantly drawn to the prog rock side of their sound and its constant melody often distracts from the heavinss.

Aldará has a warm death growl, so it's not too surprising to realise that his clean voice is rich too and it's effortless. He does a lot to impress with that clean voice here but he never seems to be trying too hard. He never has to stretch for notes that are sustained or comparatively high. I'd call out his voice as one of the highlights here, but another thing that's deceptive is how everyone else is a highlight as well. I listened through almost this entire album before I realised that the lack of standout moments on guitar was because the guitars, courtesy of brothers Jesper and Jens Nicolai Gräs stand out all the way through. Pick a random track and skip to a random place and their guitars will be doing something interesting.

And, once we've got past the introductory sections of Voyage of the Garganey I to get a grip on what this band actually do, their consistency takes over. Like the guitars, the songs don't tend to stand out from each other, not because they're not good enough to but because they're not bad enough too. It's quality throughout and only The Tower of Cosmic Nihility really emerged for me as a standout, even if I couldn't explain why. Going back and back, I think it's actually the riffing late on in the track that's so engaging for me, but that's not its only highlight.

These are dense songs with a lot going on in them and it's not easy to grasp what any of them do on a grand scale on a first listen. That applies for Laihem's Golden Pits, which is under five minutes long but it applies all the more as the song lengths expand. This is a generous album at over an hour and three of its seven songs exceed ten minutes: the title track, Waves Below at the heart of the album and Safe Across the Endless Night, which closes it out with almost fourteen minutes of epic composition. While I enjoyed the experience first time through, I enjoyed it a lot more on a second and each further listen has added to my understanding of what they're doing and how well they're doing it.

This is certainly a grower of an album, one to play and replay in order to fully appreciate it, but I'd say that a better way to appreciate it is to walk away for a little while, then come back and play just one of the songs. I did that with The Tower of Cosmic Nihility, being my favourite song from the outset, and it felt all the more vicious in its intro, more emphatic in its drumming and more complex in the way that it builds. It's a gem of a track. The reason this album is so good is that it's not alone. Try that with any of the other songs, especially Access All Worlds, The Weaver System and Safe Across the Endless Night and you'll get very similar results.

I have to go with an 8/10 for this, but it's still growing on me. I have to move on to other albums, but I'll be coming back to this one. They're Queensrÿche as an extreme metal band, with sides of Ultravox and My Dying Bride, and this may well end up with a 9/10.

Ronnie Atkins - One Shot (2021)

Country: Denmark
Style: Melodic/Hard Rock
Rating: 9/10
Release Date: 12 Mar 2021
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This may be the growingest grower of an album I've heard since starting up Apocalypse Later. I liked it on a first listen. Real is smooth, commercial and engaging. Scorpio adds bubbly ,organic keyboards and some harder edges too when needed. Then the title track makes it even more interesting, kicking off with soft piano, atmospheric synths and ballad vocals, before erupting into Meat Loaf bombast as the chorus hits and eventually turning into a neat hard rock song. It's clearly good stuff.

Then I listened through the rest and let it automatically replay. After about half a dozen times, I knew that I just didn't want to press stop and move on to something else. I'd made some notes the first time through. Next up are Subjugated and Frequency of Love, which are two songs that do much the same thing in much the same way, and I found that I was subconsciously trying to sing along without actually knowing any of the words. That was telling.

I jotted down some obvious comparisons as well. Beyond the Meat Loaf in One Shot, there's a strong Whitesnake vibe in Miles Away and a Tom Petty feel to When Dreams are Not Enough. Mostly, though, this sounds like Ronnie Atkins, which is pretty appropriate given that it is Ronnie Atkins, rather a long way into his career since I first heard Red, Hot and Heavy by Pretty Maids back in 1984. This album is a lot slicker and more mature than that one and he's really grown into his voice but t's not going to be a great surprise to fans. This is what he does in well packaged three and four minute chunks.

And what's important here is that he does it really well. I gave up taking notes after my first listen so I could concentrate on just enjoying the album. After four or five times, I took my virtual pen back up to write down the best songs and my favourites. What's most telling is that I found myself writing down pretty much every track on the album. I just went back to Before the Rise of an Empire, not because it plays the best to me but because it's the only song title I didn't write down as a highlight. It's a pretty good song, bouncy and engaging and with a neat instrumental section in the middle. I like it a lot and yet I guess it's the weakest song on the album. That realisation was a real wake up call.

Another wake up call is the fact that Ronnie Atkins was diagnosed with lung cancer a couple of years ago, not a pleasant prospect for anyone but especially for a professional rock singer. By 2020, he had the added news that his cancer had developed into stage four, meaning that it had spread. Given that knowledge, it's amazing to me how this album feels so bright and cheerful. It's melodic rock with each song memorable even before it reaches its killer hook and some of these choruses are so catchy that I could imagine Abba covering them. I think my favourite is Picture Yourself, which is glorious, but it's a nudge only above Real and Subjugated.

Backing Atkins on guitar and keyboards is his current Pretty Maids cohort Chris Laney, with a couple of former Pretty Maids bandmates joining them on drums and keyboards: that's Allan Sørensen and Morten Sandager respectively. The only non-Pretty Maids alumnus is Pontus Egberg, who's the bass player in King Diamond's current band. Guesting on guitar here and there are a number of names of the quality of Europe's Kee Marcello, At Vance's Oliver Hartmann and HammerFall's Pontus Norgren. Between them, they stir up a vibrant and rich sound.

This is one of those albums that I don't want to stop listening to. It was obviously at least a 7/10 from my first time through, but it quickly rose to an 8/10 and I think I have to go with a 9/10 by this point. It just keeps on growing on me and it's already essential. Just don't ask me to pick a favourite. If I gave you one right now, it would change in five minutes when it rolls onto the next one. Just buy the thing already!

Mike Tramp - Second Time Around (2020)

Country: Denmark
Style: Melodic Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 1 May 2020
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I remember Danish singer Mike Tramp from his time with melodic hard rockers White Lion, but I don't believe I've heard any of his solo albums, which he started to release after disbanding Freak of Nature in the late nineties. I see that this new album isn't exactly a new album, being ten tracks from an earlier thirteen track album, the self-titled release from Mike Tramp & The Rock 'n' Roll Circuz in 2009, recorded afresh with almost the same line-up. Why I'm not entirely sure, but that earlier album may only have seen release in Denmark.

I haven't heard that Rock 'n' Roll Circuz album, so can't speak to why this second crack at it, but Second Time Around certainly sounds good. The mix is excellent, the instruments vibrant and Tramp's voice clearly elevated above them all. And the songs are pretty good too. Some of these, especially the opener, All of My Life, could play on my local classic rock station without seeming remotely out of place.

All of My Life is a first person story song that puts Tramp emphatically in traditional American rock territory. It's a little like Jon Bon Jovi and a little like Bruce Springsteen, but the vocal is more emphatic than either, so I'd call out John Cougar Mellencamp as the most obvious comparison, just with lines that actually rhyme.

The new order of tracks adds in the other common elements early on. The Road has less working man rasp and more alternative rock, so it reminds a little of REM, especially through one familiar melody. Anymore, which title should have been two words back in 2009 and highlights just how much Tramp's time in America has gone to his brain, is a softer song, bringing in an acoustic guitar, a broken relationship and a country vibe.

Come On mixes all of those ingredients together, which recipe ends up being rather like a heavier Bryan Adams song, and that becomes the default sound for the album, with songs varying the formula by adding little touches here and there: a la la la chorus on Lay Down Your Guns, an AC/DC riff on Back to You, a piano on Highway. If you liked Bryan Adams albums like Reckless and Cuts Like a Knife, you'll dig this album too.

The songs that shone out for me are the ones that attempted to do something different, with All of My Life the exception because it's just a damn good melodic rock story song. Between Good and Bad is the first one to not sound American because the bedrock is clearly Thin Lizzy, right down to a notably confident bass and a staccato Jailbreak-style riff. No More Tomorrow is the other one I'd call out, because it's a lot more lively, led by an intricate riff and backed throughout by a cloud of keyboards that set an ambience.

My least favourite song is easily the ballad that closes out the album. It's called When She Cries and, while it isn't much softer than the other tracks on this album, it's the only one that doesn't seem to be fully formed. It's more like a rehearsal that shows promise but needs more work before it would be ready to share outside the band. It feels odd that a song like that would make a released album but even more so when it's over a decade old and this is the second time it's been on a "new album".

It's the only poor song here though, to my thinking, though there were three other songs on The Rock 'n' Roll Circuz that didn't make this redux. All in all, it's good to hear Tramp's voice again, even if it's on older material.

Pretty Maids - Undress Your Madness (2019)

Country: Denmark
Style: Heavy Metal
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 8 Nov 2019
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Frontiers Records are putting out a heck of a lot of good stuff nowadays and I really should be reviewing more of it. They're based in Italy but they're releasing new material from a lot of classic names and finding some quality new bands too. Sure, I wasn't too impressed with the latest Quiet Riot album but this new Pretty Maids is pure class, I have another Frontiers album down for review tomorrow and I can't wait for the new Blue Öyster Cult album, due in January.

I knew that Pretty Maids were still around because Ronnie Atkins has been a guest vocalist on the last few Avantasia albums, including Moonglow, but I was surprised to find that they've never really gone away since I first heard them back in 1985 on The Friday Rock Show. There was a brief moment in 1991 when they technically seem to have split up but it only lasted long enough for a rethink and they were back up and running. Given how good this album is, I really should take a look back at the last few because this is their fourth in seven years.

If you haven't heard them, they're a melodic heavy metal band from Denmark, which is unsurprising nowadays but was far from the norm in 1985. They're a pristine example of how a band can be heavy without ever losing an inherent focus on melody. I wrote it that way deliberately because, however much of an influence they've been on European power metal, that's not what they are. Power metal starts with the power and brings in the melody. It feels like a Pretty Maids song starts with the melody and brings in the power.

In fact, the majority of songs here could be covered by a soft rock band and still sound amazing. Sure, there are heavied up ballads that could easily be de-heavied like Shadowlands and Strength of a Rose, but someone like Richard Marx could take on Will You Still Kiss Me (If I See You in Heaven), which is a heavy song with a heavy build, and it would still sound great without any of that heaviness.

The heaviest song here is surely If You Want Peace (Prepare for War), which chugs along as well as any death metal song I've heard this year, albeit a little less extreme. Pretty Maids aren't an extreme band, but it's not hard to see why more extreme bands see them as an influence. If a band closer to the soft end of the spectrum could cover other songs, I could see a heavier band covering this one.

The best song may well be the one in between the two I just mentioned at the heart of the album. It's Runaway World and it's class throughout. It starts out softly with Chris Laney's keyboards swirling to set the mood. It builds with vocal harmonies as the instruments kick in. The verse is a textbook of how to build to a chorus and the hooks when it arrives are fantastic. I have to say that I'm surprised that it isn't apparently seen as single material, the two released thus far being the openers, Serpentine and Firesoul Fly.

If the best material is in the middle of the album, they're a strong way to begin it. They're a little subtler than Runaway World but they're both great songs. With a really strong first half and a glorious middle, it's somewhat inevitable that the second half fades a little but it's still decent. It's a quieter affair, after If You Want Peace, because the last four songs include the two ballads, which fortunately aren't remotely soporific.

This is the band's sixteenth studio album and it sounds like they're as good now as they've ever been. I enjoyed them back in the late eighties but they weren't anywhere near this good then. This is much slicker than Red, Hot and Heavy but heavier and more consistent than Future World. Ronnie's voice has matured well over the years too and he has a really tight band behind him at the moment. Obviously there's a lot of material in between those early days and now and I'm going to be very interested in seeing how long they've been up to this standard.

Volbeat - Rewind, Replay, Rebound (2019)

Country: Denmark
Style: Hard Rock
Rating: 6/10
Release Date: 2 Aug 2019
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Somehow I've managed to miss out on the varied joy that is Volbeat, a group from Denmark who have been around since 2001, feature a former key member of Anthrax in their line up and have little interest in playing only one style. Unlike the Roadside Crows album I reviewed yesterday, however, the shifting from one sound to another somehow doesn't remove coherence from the record.

I'll get to my surprising conclusion on that later. First, I'll introduce a few apparently disparate sounds that Volbeat keep returning to, so you can see how this builds.

For a start, there's safe alternative rock. Last Day Under the Sun could be a Bryan Adams song if it didn't have quite so crunchy a guitar tone. Rewind the Exit is perkier than Creed and less funky than the Chili Peppers but is reminiscent of both. Cloud 9 epitomises this approach, being overtly radio friendly with its harmonies and strong beats.

It also features a little rockabilly, the second sound in play. As you might expect, Pelvis on Fire is kind of like a punk rock Elvis holding court over a very different audience to the ones he thrilled in Las Vegas. Sorry Sack o' Bones does the same thing but it has a gimmicky edge, like the melody is taken from an alternate universe TV theme tune.

And then there's groove metal, when they decide they want to be heavier for a while. Cheapside Sloggers introduces this when it goes all doomy and starts into Metallica-style chugging guitars. The Everlasting is a bold red underline to that, easily the heaviest song on the album, with that chugging guitar sound accompanied by a more James Hetfield style vocal style.

That's not quite everything, because there are also tracks like Parasite, an abidingly polite 37 second punk song which cheekily became the first single, and When We Were Kids, which feels Irish, like a Flogging Molly ballad, but with some oddly classical riffage added in for good measure. However, those three styles cover the majority of what's going on here. This is rockabilly and alternative rock and groove metal. You know, because why not?

But here's the kicker... while each of the first few songs only play in one of those styles, as the album runs on they quickly start to merge them until everything surprisingly starts to sound like a safer version of the Michale Graves era of the Misfits, just without the expected associated focus on the schlocky horror sci-fi movies of the fifties. That begins with Die to Live, which is only experimental in the sense that the band decided they wanted to see if they could get a piano, a saxophone and the lead singer of Clutch on the same song.

And, to me, that averaging sound is really odd, but it's also weirdly blah. Like them or not, those first few songs aren't ones that can be ignored. If you like Last Day Under the Sun, you may not like Pelvis on Fire and that's doubled the other way around, but both are excellent examples of what they try to be and they'll both have a lot of fans. By the time we get to later songs such as Maybe I Believe, Leviathan and The Awakening of Bonnie Parker, it's all starting to sound the same and my main focus unintentionally ended up being to miss Doyle's guitars every time.

I didn't go to see Volbeat when they hit Phoenix last week as a supporting act on the Slipknot tour, but I have friends who went. I'll have to ask what they thought of the line-up, which is surprisingly diverse, even if we see Volbeat as just one style. They're clearly not Slipknot, but they're hardly Gojira or Behemoth either and none of those are remotely like any of the others. I'm all for breadth of styles but I do wonder who showed up to see whom on that tour and who was still playing when they left.

Based on this album, I'm intrigued as to what earlier albums sound like and there are six of them out there in the wild. I want to find out where these sounds came from, but sadly a lot more than I want to listen to this again.