Doro - Classic Diamonds

*=Staff's pick	I Rule The Ruins* Metal Tango Breaking The Law* All We Are* Für Immer Let Love Rain On Me Burn It Up* 1000x Gelebt I'm In Love With You Undying Love Me In Black Always Live To Win*

Genre	Hard Rock	Doro Pesch	Vocals
Tracks	12	Joe Taylor	Guitar
Runningtime	50 Min.	Oliver Palotai	Guitar
Label	AFM	Nick Douglas	Bass
Release	06 Oct. 2004	Johnny Dee	Drums
Country	Germany	Oliver Palotai	Keyboards
Similar artists	---

Doro releases a kind of best of album titled Classic Diamonds, although Classic Ballads And Then Some would have been a better name. The female vocalist from classic band Warlock has done several albums and with this we get a collection of songs from both Warlock and her solo albums, complete with the 40 piece classic orchestra Classic Night Orchestra that performed with her at Wacken Open Air. The songs has been arranged to be performed with an classical orchestra as well as the 6 yet unreleased new songs.

My favourite, All We Are, is just as classic as always, although the heavy feeling is lost with the absence of electric guitars the original power is still intact and the song is just as mighty as always, just slightly different. And Doro has a great attack angle on the classic Judas Priest track Breaking The Law with Udo Dirkschneider (U.D.O., Accept) on guest vocals. It starts as a ballad and then the pace is quickened as the strings takes the classic riff for a spin, a different approach on a holy songs that she greatly pulls off. The up tempo beat and the horn section in Burn It Up makes it also to be one of the better tracks but after that it is nothing of value until the closing track. In Always Live To Win Doro puts some aggression in her voice and even if its acoustic it still has that raw feeling and therefor the albums ends as great as it started, unfortunately there are too much rubbish in-between.

With the exception of Für Immer there is far too many ballads on the album, I can take one or even two if they are good but not as many as these. In tracks like Let Love Rain and 1000x Gelebt, it just gets too boring. And there are too many times when it gets to slow in the pace with all of the ballads and it gets filled romantic sentimentality. Although that shouldn't really come as a surprise. Classic Diamonds lacks too much of heaviness for my taste, the absence of electric guitars is to evident. How mighty and beautiful it might ever be I am no fan of ballads and not these kind of German schlager ballads, but I do love the heavier stuff of Doro but those few heavy rockier elements gets lost here.

See also review of: Raise Your Fist In The Air , Under My Skin , Fear No Evil , Warrior Soul

Production	Vocals	Compositions
8	7	4

Summary
4 chalices of 10 - Thomas