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Grave Digger - Rheingold


*
=Staff's pick

The Ring
Rheingold
Valhalla*
Giants*
Maidens Of War
Sword
Dragon*
Liar*
Murderer
Twilight Of The Gods*


Genre Heavy Metal
Chris Boltendahl
Vocals
Tracks 11
Manni Schmidt
Guitar
Runningtime 46 Min.
-
Guitar
Label Nuclear Blast
Jens Becker
Bass
Release 26 May 2003
Stefan Arnold
Drums
Country Germany
H.P. Katzenburg
Keyboards
Similar artists Rebellion

Friends of innovation and progressivness can stop reding here! Grave Digger are back with their 11th studioalbum, and it continues where the rest has left us as usual. The monster riffs are there, the unmistakable vocals, the choirs and the melodic choruses. A short story description: Richard Wagner once upon a time made a 4-opera suite about the Nibelungen saga - "Das Rheingold", Die Walkure", "Siegfried" and "Gotterdämmerung", and that's where the inspiration to this conceptalbum has been taken from. Of course it is heavily narrowed down and only a few pieces has been picked the original megapiece, an instead they try to clad the mood of the saga in music, but the story is intact and certain passages and solos have actually their origin in Wagners original work.

Take the choirs and refrains from Knights Of The Cross and the riffs and songstructure from Excalibur, and you got yourself a great album called Rheingold. We can only find one song that can be put in the category midtempo, and the rest is of very good pace and the force behind them are significant. You can hear that they have really tried hard to put power behind the songs. That is also noticable from the fact that the album is, by Grave Diggers standard, "only" 46 minutes long. They have peeled off all unecessary elements and focused on what counts; the Metal. As I so often have said, and always get the opportunity to get back to - simplicity reigns surpreme.

In statements from the band we can read that prior to the last album The Grave Digger, the band gave guitarist Schmidt pretty much free hands to come up with riffs and than they put together songs from that - all in order to get him "into" the band. Obviously that has worked very well, and he produces one pearl after the other on this album, so if you are a sucker for Grave Digger mainly because of the galopping and pumping riffs - you can relax. You got it.

Rheingold is according to me one of the better albums they have made so far, beaten by from The Reaper, Excalibur and The Grave Digger. That tells something, since they haven't exactly made any bad album the last 20 years. This album marks a start of yet another another period of brilliant metal for Grave Digger, and that fact leaves me very, very satisfied and also confident for the future. Grave Digger will most likely continue to deliver high quality metal for a long time to come. This is majestic and a very good powerpackage, and be sure to get this one before many other cd's out there.

See also review of: Healed By Metal , Exhumation - The Early Years , Return Of The Reaper , Clash Of The Gods , Home At Last , Ballads Of A Hangman , Liberty Or Death , 25 To Live , The Grave Digger , The Last Supper

Production
Vocals
Compositions

7

8

8

 
Summary



8 chalices of 10 - Tommy

Related links:

www.grave-digger.de