This is a mellow album with a lot of slow songs and melancholy moods. But it’s also a warm album with a lot of heart and uplifting folk music elements from the singers scottish heritage. It feels genuine and it feels good.
To me, the production holds the songs back, and the result is nothing more than just okay. But still, okay is okay, and so I think this album is all right, even though I had hoped for a little more.
Tygers of Pan Tang is that classic middle of the road-band of the NWOBHM-bag, the one that’s neither one of the legends or one of the obscure diamonds, but just was always there, and was always great.
It’s a little more melodic than the bands classic stuff, and it really works! It has a warm feeling and great variation, which makes it feel energised and vital all the way home.
I listen to this album as a wholesome, and I hear strong and powerful music. It might lack some real masterpieces that give me the goosebumps to give this a higher rate, but for a fan already familiar with the tunes, the goosebumps may rise high.
When it gets near the end, it doesn’t, because this album never seems to end! And I mean that in a good way, of course. Once you first think they’ve finished, you’ll be surprised how many hits still lie ahead! It just keeps going and going and going… And I love every minute of it.
“Final Offering” is not as heavy as the band used to be. There are no fantasy metal tunes such as “Steal Another Fantasy” or fast rockers like “Heat in the Street”. This is more mellow and, well, mature.
So what about their new album and new vocalist? Well, I don’t know. From my point of view, this is very “allright”. No songs stick that much out as great songs, but none is really bad either. It’s quite allright all the way through.
But the major question about this album is still not so much about the quality of the songs. It’s about how the band is holding up now, making their careers first album without legendary Rick Parfitt (1948-2016). With so many years in the band and such a major role of the bands sound, you’d might think it would never work without him. And then you tune in “Backbone” and it sounds so much like Status Quo you almost burst out laughing!
At the center of this project is of course four great vocalists: Gary Barden, Graham Bonnet, Robin McCauley and Doogie White. These are all great singers, so to hear them all together sure is a real fest!
They have the power, the emotion and the energy and this time they strike all the right notes. “Another State of Grace” proves once and for all that they are one of the best providers of classic hard rock out there today. Don’t miss it for the world!
If you are a great fan of old school Stockholm death metal, you won’t probably regret it if you give “Bowels of Earth” a few spins, but I also think you wouldn’t miss that much if you skipped it. I guess it comes down to how much you love Stockholm death, or more precisely how much you love Entombed. So be your own judge on that one!
I have no problem with “Dominion”, it works okay. I can listen to it and dig the music, and some songs could even become future classics; especially “(We Make) Sweden Rock” is a great anthem, and the title track is nice too. But there are no really massive tracks on this one to really take the album higher
Overall, this is quite a standard album in a long line of AOR albums released from label Frontiers and nothing really sticks out about it. But still, I quite like it. The songs are good enough and the overall vibe is nice.
When a new Volbeat album comes out you are quite sure that the fans are gonna praise and the haters are gonna hate. And since there for some reason are a lot of people in both of these categories but not too many in between, I can only give you what I think.
If I’d break it down; I really like the guitar sound in “Seven Pillars of Wisdom”, the title track is really massive and the piano part in the beginning of “The End of the War to End all Wars” is great. But I still get quite tired by listening to the whole album and in the end it gives me nothing I haven’t heard from Sabaton ten times before.
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