Royal Hunt - Paper Blood

*=Staff's pick	Break Your Chains* Not My Kind* Memory Lane Never Give Up Seven Days* SK983 Kiss Of Faith Paper Blood Seasons Change Twice Around The World

Genre	Melodic/Progr. Hard Rock	John West	Vocals
Tracks	10	Marcus Jidell	Guitar
Runningtime	56 Min.	-	Guitar
Label	Frontiers Records	André Andersen	Bass
Release	06 June 2005	Allan Sorensen	Drums
Country	Denmark/England	André Andersen	Keyboards
Similar artists	Threshold, Symphony X, Evil Masquerade

Danish band Royal Hunt are starting to get a long history now. The band, which is being lead by keyboard player André Andersen, debuted back in 1992 and are now back with their eighth studio release.

The keyboards are in front and it is rather quickly obvious which band you are listening to when the album kicks in to action with the fast and powerful Break Your Chains that has a great deal of a melodic sense and a catchy refrain. It is followed by the up-tempo track Not My Kind and now I sense that Royal Hunt is looking back to their earlier sound. I have not followed the band closely during the years but as far as I can tell Paper Blood comes close to the album Paradox (1997) in sound and style.

The trademarks of Royal Hunt with nice arrangements and choirs filling in at the refrains are still intact and their music is very playful, melodic hard rock with a slight progressive touch. The band are indeed instrumentaly skilled but they do not have to show off in three instrumental tracks to prove it. Even though they are good, simply one ought to have been enough since they don't stand that far apart from each other anyway.

In the track Seven Days they are taking some wider turns as the music becomes more progressive and also has a Deep Purple/Rainbow atmosphere over it. In the end it is a solid album but falls a bit with the instrumental tracks and with the to me pointless power ballad Seasons Change. For fans of the band, I have no doubt that this will appeal to you, but of the albums I have heard from the band, this one ends up somewhere in the middle.

See also review of: Paradox II: Collision Course , 2006 Live

Production	Vocals	Compositions
8	7	6

Summary
6,5 chalices of 10 - Thomas