Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Gamma Ray
Label: Ear Music Records
Release: 2014
Runtime: 56:23
Rating: 4.5/5
With »Empire Of The Undead« Gamma Ray have served up an album that sounds a touch different from what we’re generally used to from them! But they pulled it off smoothly. Painlessly. With flying colors, and in a way that keeps the noble essence of the band’s power metal ID card, the thing their die-hard fans don’t want straying from the field of constant predictability, from being »updated« to the point where it would somehow turn inferior.
This is the darkest album of the band’s career. The album title already hints at it, and the cover even more so. Opening track Avalon makes it real in a heartbeat! The melodies of this new mini-epic suite, running over nine minutes, are built on minor keys, and the song is packed with mood swings. The band mostly keeps a mid-tempo pace here, which only intensifies the gloom and obscurity of the track. Avalon is, by the way, brewed purely for the live stage! The middle instrumental section is composed and arranged in the spirit of classic Iron Maiden classics, with a few sudden tempo changes, and soon the lead melodies with “Oh-oh” hooks, typical of Iron Maiden’s pioneering style, start grabbing your attention. A proven formula that always catches fire. The song is generously backed by keyboards that masterfully contrast the soundscape and, because of that, the dizzying swerves of mood. An outstanding composition that may well grow into a general favorite among Gamma Ray fans in the future.
Gamma Ray have always had a lot of sympathy for the figure and work of Judas Priest. That’s nothing new. The whole of German power metal is built on that kind of sympathy for Priest. The new album also has a few songs whose lead riff, backed by crushing, charging rhythms laid over the ultrasonic thumping of double bass drum pedals, evokes the most “wicked deeds” of the classic Judas Priest era (the period of the album »Painkiller«). But of course the chorus is delivered in the typical Gamma Ray manner. Hellbent is a prime example, as is the title track Empire Of The Undead, placed toward the middle of the album.
That Gamma Ray allowed themselves a few more sonic experiments this time around is confirmed by the third track, Pale Rider, which sports a deliberately smudged, »modern«-sounding production. The feeling is deepened by the fact that the melody in the main guitar phrase deliberately »squats down,« since a semitone more is purposely slipped into that very phrase. Still, the chorus once again maintains the band’s recognizable bombast. But this time it’s weighed down with a bit more »sonic dirt.« Born to Fly picks up some typical traits of how chorus melodies were crafted in the classic Gamma Ray days (the nineties), while the verse is »Halford-style« (the »Ressurection« era), especially thanks to the vocal color and melody Kai Hansen reaches for at this point in the song.
With the next two songs, the utterly vampiric (fastest song on the album) title track Empire Of the Undead and the Master Of Confusion placed right before it, Gamma Ray »repeat« the story of the »Master Of Confusion« EP (2013). The song Empire Of The Undead already announced the title of the new studio album last year. Both songs are modeled on how the songs on the album »To The Metal« were written, while in terms of sound production, the album »Empire Of The Undead« returns to its opening stretch (Avalon, Hellbent). Master Of Confusion is also closely echoed, in style and songwriting, by Seven, placed just before the end of the album. Another classic Gamma Ray pulse-racer that’s guaranteed to be tailor-made for every fan of the band. And the hyper-accelerated Empire Of The Undead has its speed twin on this album too. That’s the closer, I Will Return. Besides the opener Avalon, this song is surely the second peak of the new album. A song cut in the mold of some of the epics from the album »Powerplant« (1999), with an outstanding build-up of moods flowing through many transitions, and finally the song enters an atmospheric crescendo, with yet another fully effective chorus melody. A masterpiece to close out »Empire Of The Undead« that forces you to hit »play« on your CD player again!
The ballad Time For Deliverance is the moment where acoustic guitars and keyboards take over the arrangements. A song that serves as a temporary breather from the tensely wound metallic onslaught of the rest of the album. A typical Gamma Ray ballad that, as a composition, brings to mind the classic A While in Dreamland!
Kai Hansen still defies even the highest registers successfully. His voice has thickened a bit over the years and gained some »grit.« Kai doesn’t push into the high notes unconditionally, but doses out melodic lines at exactly those moments when the anger and aggression of the metal message absolutely demand it from him. No rushing in headlong here! Kai keeps his typically cool, dark vocal contour, fully lived-in and utterly grounded in his delivery!
Demonseed is yet another exceptionally dark march that, with its energy, pretty much defines the story of the new Gamma Ray and the album »Empire of the Undead«
On top of all that, it’s worth pointing out once again the outstanding chemistry the foursome creates in the studio. The middle instrumental sections are, as ever, seasoned with flinty, crazy solos that Kai Hansen and Henjo Richter trade in duels. They remain the extra spice of this highly defined and polished power metal product. Even in their mature years Gamma Ray keep cranking out uncompromisingly excellent solos, once again woven into well-crafted (riff-based and speed-“dotted”) harmonies in thirds, through which Gamma Ray lead the song back to the chorus melody (or out of it into the middle instrumental section)! Kai and company remain masters of putting compositions together. Gamma Ray know no slacking or resting on their laurels, unlike Iron Maiden with their three guitarists in the lineup since 1999, who haven’t managed to put together even a single solo in a long time that confidently shows any tangible spark of inventiveness.
The new Gamma Ray album has brought some sonic experimentation, but it’s placed only here and there and by no means takes the dominant role. It’s noticeably emphasized only in the two aforementioned songs, which still keep all the fundamental traits of Gamma Ray typicality! So the new album is the darkest release in the career of this long-lived and seasoned power metal outfit. It also marks the debut of new drummer Michael Ehre, who confidently replaced the exceptional Daniel Zimmermann at 100% – the latter left the band for good in 2012. Some of the solutions in the transitions show that Ehre is a different kind of drummer, which gives the elements of Gamma Ray’s music a much-needed refresh. With »Empire Of The Undead« Gamma Ray stay at the very top of the game when it comes to brewing the noblest power metal, the way the unique, universal magic of this genre knows it!
Line-up
Kai Hansen – guitar, vocals
Henjo Richter – guitar
Dirk Schlächter – bass guitar
Michael Ehre – drums
GUEST MUSICIAN:
Corvin Bahn – keyboards
Production
Dirk Schlächter & Kai Hansen
Track list
01. Avalon
02. Hellbent
03. Pale Rider
04. Born To Fly
05. Master Of Confusion
06. Empire Of The Undead
07. Time For Deliverance
08. Demonseed
09. Seven
10. I Will Return
