Chinchilla - Madtropolis

*=Staff's pick	The Arise Of Madtropolis Our Destiny* A Dance With The Devil* When The Sand Darkens The Sun Entire World Satellite Heavy Metal* Headless Fools* Turn Around The Magic Table Money Rules Everything* Battle Of The World* Madtropolis* The Fall Of Madtropolis

Genre	Heavy Metal	Tommy Laasch	Vocals
Tracks	13	Udo Gerstenmeyer	Guitar
Runningtime	58 Min.	-	Guitar
Label	Metal Blade	Josh Häberle	Bass
Release	05 May 2003	Chris Schwinn	Drums
Country	Germany	Artur Diessner	Keyboards
Similar artists	---

Chinchilla are back with their 4th studioalbum, and the expectations are high from my side since their last effort The Last Millenium was a real metalpearl with nothing but strong, heavy songs in the best of a good, old school metalstyle. You can almost touch the feeling of pure joy and love for metalmusic when these guys kick off their setlist on this album. For the yet uninitiated, Chinchillas music can easiest be described as very, very powerful but without being Power Metal, and built up with classic ingredients and riffs with strong emphasis on melodies, and from to time with a hint of rock'roll baked in to it.

After a very strong opening with two metalkicks in the face in form of heavy, fast driven Our Destiny and A Dance With The Devil, the album continues in midtempo for a few songs, with Satellite as the song that differs the most from the rest with it's pop-ish approach. Certain parallels can in that song be drawn to Slade in their best moments, and that is in itself not a bad thing. The power is after that taken up again with Heavy Metal, which delivers just what it claim to do - a really thick, driven guitarriff with a strong singalong chorus - all accompanied by a wall of keyboards that really makes the difference. The energy tend to escalte the longer into the cd we come, and it's hard to point out any songs that are much better than others - they are with the exception of 1 - max 2 - equally great, and the good tempo is kept until the end where the mighty titletrack closes the show.

The first times I heard the cd, I felt that it lost a bit too much tempo in the middle, but I have reconsidered that by now, and realize that it's a perfect mix of a few midtemposongs in between the fastpaced ones. That can actually be needed, because in the name of all honesty, variation isn't one of Chinchilla's trademarks. The songs are pretty much in the same style, and not much space are given to experimenting and implementing of weird elements and tones - instead they concentrate everything on what they do better than most bands: pure, simple metal. There are no difficulties to tell them apart, though, since they all have their significant features.

The vocals are worth an extra chalise alone, since Tommy Laasche can be compared to a very, very powerful Bruce Dickinson in his absolute best days, mixed with (insert any great metalvocalist with midpitched voice here: _ _ _ _ _ ). One of the greatest singers in the metalscene at the moment without doubt. Chinchilla is showing themselves from a bit more heavier and to-the-core side this time compared to their earlier releases, which I think is a firm step in the right direction, and makes this one of the best albums I have heard in a while and is a perfect example of solid, melodic and heavy metal when it is at it's best.

Check this great album out!

See also review of: Take No Prisoners , The Last Millenium

Production	Vocals	Compositions
9	9	9

Summary
9 chalices of 10 - Tommy