This album has been sitting around waiting to be reviewed for awhile. I've taken my sweet, sweet time in hopes that with some aging that something special would eventually reveal itself. What I was waiting for? No idea, but it hasn't come out yet so therefore it's safe to assume that it won't. So here we go.
Royal Hunt had their peak in the mid 90s with second vocalist DC Cooper and two spectacular albums, "Moving Target" and the semi-concept disc, "Paradox". After Cooper was dismissed,
John West from the ho-hum keyboard noodling outfit Artension was recruited and while West had more of an
AOR warmth to his pipes, Cooper's emoting and massive emotional output was painfully missed. "Fear" in 1999 was the first that kind of wanted to prove that they could be as productive and awesome without DC but most of the public just didn't buy it. Literally. The following albums were also rather uninspiring, "The Mission" being rather boring and "Eyewitness" a rehash of the same. Now Steen Morgensen, the bassist is gone to pursue his
Cornerstone project fulltime, and Jacob Kjaer the guitarist has also jumped ship, and the overall quality just keeps slipping away.
Now we're on "Paper Blood" which has hideous artwork but retains all the things you may have come to love in the RH camp. Lots and lots of Andre Anderson's keyboards, some nice guitar work, and more instrumental noodling than you can shake a probing prog stick at. The snappy songwriting of the early days with "Land of Broken Hearts" and "Clown in the Mirror" has definitely passed us by now. The band is more standard issue progressive rock with a heavy metal bent.
Songs like
"Not My Kind" make good use of West's vocal styling, offers up a musical web that's awaiting to be untangled by the prog fantatics but still keeps a concise melody close at hand without jumping overboard with overly lengthy instrumental tangents. This has a snappy chorus that is a tad repetitive but the vocal harmonies lend it a special touch and crossover appeal. Without that accessibility, the tracks tend to spiral out of control such as
"Kiss of Faith" which is mind numbing in spots and gets tedious despite a great vocal performance.
Other highlights however, include
"Seven Days" which is slower and has a taste and texture unlike anything else to be found here and the lovely ballad
"Season's Change". This one is really quite fantastic, with that signature
Royal Hunt stamp of pompousness and West's vocals coming across with a bluesy Glenn Hughes-like twist.
"Seven Days" is so entrenched in its darkness that the vocals are even lite death type growls with some serious heavy riffing in the background. If the rest of the guitars dance with the lithe flair of a ballerina, this would be thrashing around like a semi-melodic moshpit. Just for its severity in contrast to the rest of the disc, this one is a song to watch for and brings a pleasant surprise to an album full of predictable staples.
The album is also bogged down by some substandard offerings such as the opener,
"Break Your Chains" which is so typical that even though it rocks quite hard, is a good track to nap by. The title cut is so over the top and indulgently decadent, causing it not to be dramatic and epic, which was likely the desired outcome, but rather the excessiveness is so overdone, it waters it down to an almost parody, with a cheesy effect.
The two instrumentals are also yawners, even if
"SK 983" has Andre pounding the stuffing out of his keyboard and then some. One of these vocal-less tracks would have been acceptable but tacking
"Memory Lane" on here too is just too much, especially when the rather short running time is considered. There just isn't enough real estate here to have three instrumentals taking up valuable space. Their placement is unfortunate, since just as the album begins to pick up a little steam and starts building momentum, it comes screaming to a halt. This is repeated again with the frenzied
"SK 983" coming after the dark and poignant
"Seven Days". It just gives the disc a scattered, thoughtless feel, not what you want in a prog metal album since these pride themselves on being pretentious and requiring lots of mental taxing to sort through.
"Twice Around the World" brings it to a close on an instrumental note and sounds like music from a Castlevania video game soundtrack. Not quite Castlevania: Symphony of the Night quality but more like Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow.
You do have to give Andre some credit.
Royal Hunt has had a distinctive style since they first broke ground as a mostly Danish band, instead of the international affair they have become, and Anderson has kept that intact for the most part. It might not be mixed with as much innovation now as was seen in the past, but that unique flavor is still underneath there, which makes this a no brainer purchase for fans of the band. They may have had more personelle changes but the core heart remains.
At the end of the day (and the end of the album),
Royal Hunt has given us yet another disc to add to our collections that is overall a solid effort but yet brings nothing original to the table. They play it safe, and more often than not, when a band plays it safe, the results are a bit on the uninteresting side. They definitely need something to light the fire back under their arses, and while
"Seven Days" is a good move on their part, the rest of "Paper Blood" is just too unremarkable but yet is more than worthy of the
Royal Hunt banner. On one hand it's refreshing that they have stuck to their guns, but in my heart I believe Andre has it in him to crank out something superb that harkens back to their groundbreaking days of yore. While an enjoyable, if sometimes frustrating, collection of music, it seems that this band has the potential to be much more again. "Paper Blood" is decent, but just isn't a step towards that achievement.
Written by
Alanna Sunday, October 23, 2005
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