Grave Digger
Clash Of The Gods
Napalm Records
2012
Grave Digger have being going on since the early 80s, faltering ever slightly along the way and maybe sometimes taking a year or two off, but they have pretty much been rather consistent in their output both in terms of quantity as well as quality, as with the exception of one or two albums, the listener, pretty much knew what he was gonna get.
“Clash of the Gods” the band’s sixteenth album, does very little to change any of what the band had been doing for the past 20 years or so, offering more of the same epic, muscular classic heavy metal that owes quite a bit to “Accept”. This time the band decided to draw inspiration from the Greek mythology, so this is likely to be viewed positively, by the remaining Greek fans, that the austerity measures, haven’t driven to despair! (hehe, had to make a little joke about that, just to mention that we really appreciate the band’s singer messages of solidarity to the Greek people)
As unlikely to open an album heavily based on and drawing from Greek Mythology is “Charon” a semi spoken and quasi-sung introduction in German! Oh well, it’s as gothic and as dark as the boatman himself! (voiced here, by one of them In Extremo, lads)
“God of Terror” is a mean, heavy as hell, metal holocaust, with a simple but very effective riff and a matching chorus that’s really spot on!
“Hell-Dog” attempts to be even heavier and has a quite epic section in there, and some mean lead work, but it really lacks a proper and good chorus and some spacey keyboard effects, really feel a bit out of place.
“Medusa” has some interesting riffs and an air of mystery. The chorus is a bit odd, but oddly it works!
“Clash of the Gods” is wasting more of its time with a bouzouki like, mimicking. Before it becomes a folk doom epic paradigm.
“Death Angel & The Grave Digger” is non-canonical in the albums sequence as it refers to the band’s own mythology of “Grave Diggers”. Sufficient to say is that it’s faster and different than a lot of the songs on offer here.
“Walls of Sorrow” is a scorching track, but it has a very melodic chorus, that makes a nice contrast.
“Call of The Sirens” has some serious choir vox, and it is heavy but apart from it’s very repetitive chorus, the rest of it, feels a bit misguided, just like Ulysses to which it refers to. There’s some nice lead work and even a sort harpsichord passage, believe it, or believe it not!
“Warriors Revenge” is way more “to the point” and challenges “Manowar” in terms of “being epic as #$#@#”. Simple, but effective.
“...With the Wind” is 48 seconds of wind blowing fx with some soft keyboard thing going on in the background, right before the albums normal closer “Home At Last” which may sound more like a German Drinking song, re-written to fit the purpose and somewhat comically reminds me of “Over The Hill and Far Away” but is good fun!
“Saint’s of The Broken Souls” is a decent bouzouki riff-meets metal, eastern influenced doomy metal track, but it’s only found on the digipack edition as well as “Home At Last” (Zurück Nach Haus) which is nothing more than a German version of the said song.
Overall, a welcome notion by the band to try and utilize the Greek Mythology, for an album, but the resulting album, cannot be counted among the bands best output. It’s heavy, it’s gloomy and it’s decent, but it’s not great! But hey they could do one about Alexander, since he was allegedly “Great”!
I honestly wasn’t thrilled with the album, but I’ll stick by the band and hope that their next album will allow them to recapture their “lost” muse and then they may be back with a vengeance! Until then...
“Clash of the Gods” the band’s sixteenth album, does very little to change any of what the band had been doing for the past 20 years or so, offering more of the same epic, muscular classic heavy metal that owes quite a bit to “Accept”. This time the band decided to draw inspiration from the Greek mythology, so this is likely to be viewed positively, by the remaining Greek fans, that the austerity measures, haven’t driven to despair! (hehe, had to make a little joke about that, just to mention that we really appreciate the band’s singer messages of solidarity to the Greek people)
As unlikely to open an album heavily based on and drawing from Greek Mythology is “Charon” a semi spoken and quasi-sung introduction in German! Oh well, it’s as gothic and as dark as the boatman himself! (voiced here, by one of them In Extremo, lads)
“God of Terror” is a mean, heavy as hell, metal holocaust, with a simple but very effective riff and a matching chorus that’s really spot on!
“Hell-Dog” attempts to be even heavier and has a quite epic section in there, and some mean lead work, but it really lacks a proper and good chorus and some spacey keyboard effects, really feel a bit out of place.
“Medusa” has some interesting riffs and an air of mystery. The chorus is a bit odd, but oddly it works!
“Clash of the Gods” is wasting more of its time with a bouzouki like, mimicking. Before it becomes a folk doom epic paradigm.
“Death Angel & The Grave Digger” is non-canonical in the albums sequence as it refers to the band’s own mythology of “Grave Diggers”. Sufficient to say is that it’s faster and different than a lot of the songs on offer here.
“Walls of Sorrow” is a scorching track, but it has a very melodic chorus, that makes a nice contrast.
“Call of The Sirens” has some serious choir vox, and it is heavy but apart from it’s very repetitive chorus, the rest of it, feels a bit misguided, just like Ulysses to which it refers to. There’s some nice lead work and even a sort harpsichord passage, believe it, or believe it not!
“Warriors Revenge” is way more “to the point” and challenges “Manowar” in terms of “being epic as #$#@#”. Simple, but effective.
“...With the Wind” is 48 seconds of wind blowing fx with some soft keyboard thing going on in the background, right before the albums normal closer “Home At Last” which may sound more like a German Drinking song, re-written to fit the purpose and somewhat comically reminds me of “Over The Hill and Far Away” but is good fun!
“Saint’s of The Broken Souls” is a decent bouzouki riff-meets metal, eastern influenced doomy metal track, but it’s only found on the digipack edition as well as “Home At Last” (Zurück Nach Haus) which is nothing more than a German version of the said song.
Overall, a welcome notion by the band to try and utilize the Greek Mythology, for an album, but the resulting album, cannot be counted among the bands best output. It’s heavy, it’s gloomy and it’s decent, but it’s not great! But hey they could do one about Alexander, since he was allegedly “Great”!
I honestly wasn’t thrilled with the album, but I’ll stick by the band and hope that their next album will allow them to recapture their “lost” muse and then they may be back with a vengeance! Until then...