Freedom Call - Land Of The Crimson Dawn

Published February 02 2012

*=Staff's pick	Age Of The Phoenix* Rockstars Crimson Dawn 66 Warriors Back Into The Land Of Light Sun In The Dark Hero On Video Valley Of Kingdom Killer Gear Rockin' Radio Terra Liberty* Eternity Space Legends Power & Glory

Genre	Power Metal	Chris Bay	Vocals
Tracks	14	Chris Bay	Guitar
Running time	65 Min.	Lars Rettkowitz	Guitar
Label	Steamhammer/SPV	Samy Saemann	Bass
Release	27 February 2012	Klaus Sperling	Drums
Country	Germany	Chris Bay	Keyboard
Producer	Chris Bay, Stephan Ernst
Similar artists	Gamma Ray, Stratovarius

Freedom Call is back with their seventh full length studio album. This time without co-founder, drummer och co-songwriter Daniel Zimmermann, leaving lead singer and guitarist Chris Bay as the only existing original member.

Land Of The Crimson Dawn opens with a typical Freedom Call song called Age Of The Phoenix. A song with vibes from their early releases with backing vocals choirs and a speedy, harmonic melody. Easily one of the best tracks on this new release.

The more I listen to the album, the more I can hear that they are trying to bring the sound back to their roots, as most songs follow their old pattern as described above. There are many similarities with their two first albums Stairway To Fairyland and Crystal Empire. In this case it's rather successful and not bad at all, like it usually is. I don't know about Back Into The Land Of Light though, as they have taken the title and used parts of one of their most popular songs and created a new song from it. Even if most of the song is totally different, maybe this is taking things one step too far?

Their latest release Legend Of The Shadow King had darker songs due to the concept story. Now they're almost gone as they have returned to their bombastic and brisk power metal, or happy metal as Mr. Bay prefers to call it. Some darker parts are still there, but now they work as bridges instead of as whole songs and also some heaviness is present in Killer Gear and Eternity, so this is not an album with happy and catchy songs all through. This is however a Freedom Call album and don't expect otherwise.

Even if they have taken a couple of steps back, I think this is the right direction for this band and actually even one step forward, since their most popular and best albums sounds like this one and this is what Freedom Call should sound like. Time will tell if these songs will stand up to their old ones. I think many of them do, even if it will probably take a couple of years until they reach the same status as their predecessors.

Performance	Originality	Production	Vocals	Songwriting
7	5	6	7	8

Summary
8 chalices of 10 - Tobbe