Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Gamma Ray
Label: Ear Music Records
Release: 2015
Running time: 150:54
Rating: 4.5/5
After eleven studio albums in a long-lived career, the famous Hamburg metallers, a crew led by the untamed metal heart of power metal icon Kai Hansen, more than deserve a tribute like this! “The Best of Gamma Ray” is here. The band’s first compilation in the classic sense of the word. A double one. With remastered sound on every single track on it. Kai Hansen picked them himself, and the remastered sound heralds the gradual reissue of the classic Gamma Ray albums throughout this year!
The tracks are mixed up by age across the two discs. They don’t run in chronological order of the albums’ release, i.e. oldest to newest. That kind of running order was used, for example, on the ultimate double “sandwich” »Blast form the Past« (2000), a retrospective cross-section of the career with re-recorded songs by (let’s say) the classic Gamma Ray line-up of Hansen/Schlächter/Richter Zimmermann. Interestingly, Hansen decided to partly use tracks from the »Blast from the Past« album for this compilation. He stuck to that for the songs from the first three albums, and from the fourth, »Land of the Free« (1995), too. In other words, the albums released before the aforementioned “classic” Gamma Ray line-up came together (the period before »Somewhere Out in Space« came out in 1997). He certainly won’t dare do that when the band’s first four albums get reissued this year. And that’s where the little trick lies. Those of you who don’t have the »Blast from the Past« compilation, and who really should have Gamma Ray releases in your CD collection, will be indirectly doomed to add »Best OF Gamma Ray« to that same collection, because »Blast from the Past« has been unobtainable in CD shops for quite a while now.
Either way, Kai picked the material for the compilation himself and found himself facing an extremely unpleasant task. A pile of no less excellent songs got left out, because Gamma Ray is a band that has made very few compositional blunders in its career, and even those actually date from the period of searching for a stylistic and sonic identity, i.e. the days of the albums »Sigh No More«« (1991) and »Insanity And Genious« (1993). Both albums are partly represented on this compilation by “fixed” versions, that is, freshly re-recorded takes on the originals.
On Dream Healer (“Sigh No More”, 1991) and Tribute to the Past (“Insanity And Genious”, 1993) the original vocals are kept, which you can count as an honorable gesture from Hansen toward his former Gamma Ray comrade and one of the finest German heavy metal singers, Ralf Scheppers. Time To Break Free from “Land of the Free” also keeps the original vocals of Michael Kiske, Hansen’s former Helloween and current Unisonic bandmate!
Precisely because of the wonderfully jumbled running order across both discs (pulled from different periods of the career), listening to the compilation is like watching a gripping drama, with sudden swings in atmosphere (which comes down to the gradual development of their own sound and style: older tracks like Heaven Can Wait and Dream Healer, for instance, love to yank you straight back to classic Helloween). If Gamma Ray picked a live set list like the one these two discs add up to, they’d conjure up heaven on Earth for every fan of their output. Epic power metal mini-suites like Armageddon, Somewhere Out in Space, Heading for Tomorrow, Avalon and Insurrection are proof that the band grew up on seventies progressive rock, as well as classic rock outfits like Deep Pruple, Rainbow and Uriah Heep. Gamma Ray have always been known as a band of exceptionally polished melodies, tight, solid compositions, ravenous chorus hooks, razor-sharp riffs and tons of brilliantly delivered virtuoso escapades from all four building blocks of the sound, commanded since time immemorial by the one and only, venomously pissed-off, screeching voice of exceptional range: Kai Hansen.
The remastered sound brings out sharper vocal contrast, and you feel it especially in the harmonized vocal choirs surrounding Hansen’s lead vocal, where the harmonized lines stand out even more clearly. You can also feel that the “envelope” of keyboard arrangements, which colors the drama of the songs right inside the guitar phrases, sits more prominently in the soundscape. Simple as that. Artistically, the Gamma Ray catalog is the envy of just about everyone, so it’s insanely hard to pick the best of the best. Luckily, it’s impossible to make a bad Gamma Ray compilation. A fine document to set you off on an adventure into the musical world of Gamma Ray. And that may well tempt you into gradually collecting all the classic albums which, as mentioned, will be reissued bit by bit throughout this year.
Line-up
Kai Hansen – guitar, vocals
Henjo Richter – guitar
Dirk Schlächter – bass
Michael Ehre – drums
Daniel Zimmermann – drums
Ralf Scheppers – vocals
Michael Kiske – vocals
Jan Rubach – bass
Thomas Nack – drums
Production
Kai Hansen
Track list
CD 1.:
1. Armageddon
2. Heaven Can Wait
3. Hellbent
4. Dream Healer
5. Land of the Free
6. To the Metal
7. Somewhere Out in Space
8. Real World
9. Induction
10. Dethrone Tyranny
11. Rebellion in Dreamland
12. Heading for Tomorrow
CD 2.:
1. Eagle
2. Avalon
3. Man on a Mission
4. The Spirit
5. Tribute to the Past
6. Empathy
7. Valley of the Kings
8. Lust for Life
9. Master of Confusion
10. Blood Religion
11. Time to Break Free
12. Insurrection
13. Send Me a Sign
