Pretty Maids - Kingmaker

Published November 04 2016

*=Staff's pick	When God Took A Day Off* Kingmaker* Face The World Humanize Me Last Beauty On Earth Bull's Eye King Of The Right Here And Now Heaven's Little Devil* Civilized Monsters* Sickening Was That What You Wanted?

Genre	Heavy Metal/Hard Rock	Ronnie Atkins	Vocals
Tracks	11	Ken Hammer	Guitar
Running time	49 Min.	-	Guitar
Label	Frontiers Music	Rene Shades	Bass
Release	November 4, 2016	Allan Tschicaja	Drums
Country	Denmark	-	Keyboard
Producer	Jacob Hansen
Similar artists	---

The Danish long-running outfit Pretty Maids' records have more or less always contained a mix of
heavy metal and hard rock songs and it's been rather difficult to put a fixed label on what they've come out with over a whole record. Therefore it's hard to categorize them in one single genre and even though this new album in fact comes up closer to the heavy metal side of the story, it's at the end of the day still no real exception to the band's pretty curved line.

The record takes off exquisitely with When God Took A Day Off and the title track, but then loses just a little bit of its momentum with a couple of songs that don't have quite the same stunning effect that the openers had. Those songs aren't bad in any way, but still the contrast is palpable and it's making them come out as just something satisfactory in the end. The record really comes alive again on the second half though, with energy, a nice flow and good songs overall.

When these guys put out a new record nowadays you know quite well what you're gonna get. So there's pretty much nothing new on Kingmaker to report and certain stuff is clearly recognizable from the last couple of records too. On the other hand they're still putting out new material pretty frequently and I'm sure that the two original members Ronnie Atkins and Ken Hammer know exactly what they're looking for and don't mind this kind of slow progress for the band and I don't see their fans complaining either, so there would be hard to find a good reason to stop this fine combination.

I would say that Kingmaker is on par with almost everything else that the band has come out with in the 2000's, where I think that they've kept an even strong level over the years and I reckon that fans to the band generally will like what they get this time too.

Performance	Originality	Production	Vocals	Songwriting
7	3	7	7	7

Summary
7 chalices of 10 - Tobbe