Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Grave Digger
Label: Napalm Records
Released: 2012
Length: 45:04
Rating: 4/5
The new Grave Digger are, thanks to a twist of fate, becoming the old Grave Digger again. »The Clans Will Rise Again« (2010) was an album of extreme caution, and one that showed quite a few holes. Not only did the band get nothing out of it except a feeling that they had to record a new album as soon as possible, at all costs, after Manni Schmidt left, and open a new chapter in their career. Simply by adding a new recruit, guitarist Axel Ritt, they put together an album that was meant to tie in thematically, as a kind of sequel, to the cult Grave Digger classic from 1996, »Tunes Of War«. It turned out to be too tough a bite and too lofty a goal. It was 2010. The baptism year for the band’s new member, guitarist Axel Ritt, who mostly just carried out assigned tasks and didn’t bother developing even a sliver of his own creative insight in the songs.
Grave Digger’s expressiveness, and above all the persuasiveness of their output, rests on their guitarists. Everything can grow out of a guitar riff, or, on the flip side, everything can fall apart. With Grave Digger this interdependence is all the more tangible. Time marches on, and Grave Digger have played a nice bundle of gigs in the new lineup. Especially at the latest shows, including the famous appearance at Wacken Open Air festival that gave us the live DVD/CD »The Clans Are Still Marching«, they found their true form again, and evidently warmed the engines of their creativity and drive back up to proper working temperature. The EP »Home At Last«, released at the end of July this year, hinted that the band is waking up again, and »Clash Of The Gods« is the album that confirms Axel Ritt has finally managed to fully feel the point of the guitar riff that »Grave Digger metal« demands.
It’s clear that Grave Digger can’t say anything new unless they start changing their style, which fans of their music don’t want. Let’s be honest. Boltendahl probably can’t do it any other way anyway, but he’s smart enough to know that this hermetic stylistic closure puts bread on his table, and that he’d sooner start another band or a side project than let some uncontrolled fit seize him and stumble into something as foolish as a stylistic makeover of Grave Digger. What’s more, Boltendahl’s hermeticism was the official reason Manni Schmidt left the band, having grown tired of repeating riffs tested a thousand times. Ritt, on the other hand, unlike the less patient Manni, will have to learn that something matters more than endless self-repetition, namely the fact that says: »Don’t bite the hand that feeds you!«.
Given this hermetic closure toward new musical challenges, Grave Digger in their »status quo situation« have room for just one single maneuver. The album intro. They used it this time too. With the song Charon they really did deliver an intro, even though it’s a proper song with head and tail – in the opening slot it works only as an intro to an album that really is a bit different from the openers we usually expect from Grave Digger. First of all, the lyrics of Charon (Charon is the ferryman of Greek mythology who carries the souls of the dead across the river Styx to Hades) are sung in German, and the sinister use of keyboards that mimic the sound of a baroque harpsichord, combined with the chant, brings this song close to the approach of German »neo-medieval metal« acts like In Extremo or Corvus Corax.
So, nothing new. Just an album that stands fully behind the name of the classic Grave Digger albums. And in Grave Digger’s case, that’s enough. Which means Axel Ritt played the guitars superbly. In everything. The riffing, the guitar ornaments, the solos. He nailed the guitar sound a proper Grave Digger album demands and wiped out all the suspicion music critics had about whether he fit into the band, after it put out a less convincing studio release in 2010. Sure, there was quite a bit of flirting with riffs used in the past. On that front, and especially in the production, the integration of the symphonic elements and the chorus melodies, where the famous mix of Boltendahl’s trademark rasp with choir harmonies is far from missing, and finally in the album’s chosen theme, which this time draws on Greek mythology, this is the album that most resembles the Grave Digger album »Rheingold« from 2003. The nature of the Greek mythology stories the new Grave Digger songs bring demands this approach. Hence the basic similarity between the two.
As mentioned. It’s true. So there was some flirting with old riffs, and the most direct case is the new Call Of The Sirens, whose riff, laid over a heavily rolling, slowed-down rhythm, comes very close to the riff of the classic The Keepers Of The Holy Grail (album »Knights Of The Cross«, 1998); the riff is also sharpened at its »peaks« in classic Black Sabbath style. Then again, in songs like God of Terror (a song thematically tied to Hades, god of the underworld) and Warriors Revenge, the guitar phrases used recall most of all the ideas from the album »Rheingold« (2003).
The songs are craftily arranged, the sound is packed full; the band’s rich experience simply allows nothing else. The symphonic elements are engraved in just the right dose when it comes to combining them with the Teutonic rawness of the primordial wrath of »Grave Digger metal«. Boltendahl’s vocals and rasp are once again fully effective and, in the production, given extra contrast at key points (for instance in Medusa, one of the album’s best songs), which superbly deepens the drama of the moods captured on the album. The fact is that concept-building simply suits Grave Digger. And this time too the band gave real meaning and new life to their musical sermon through a chosen slice of Greek mythology. Of course, none of it would have worked if Axel Ritt hadn’t plugged into the Grave Digger lineup effectively and on time.
Lineup
Chris Boltendahl – vocals, backing vocals
Axel Ritt – guitar, backing vocals
H.P. Katzenburg – keyboards
Jens Becker – bass
Stefan Arnold – drums
Production
Chris Boltendahl & Grave Digger
Tracklist
01. Charon (2:19)
02. God Of Terror (4:19)
03. Hell Dog (4:28)
04. Medusa (5:39)
05. Clash Of The Gods (4:53)
06. Death Angel & The Grave Digger (4:22)
07. Walls Of Sorrow (4:43)
08. Call Of The Sirens (5:30)
09. Warriors Revenge (4:00)
10. …With The Wind (0:48)
11. Home At Last (3:57)
