Author: Rok Klemše
Artist: Requiem
Label: Self-released
Release date: year_month
Rating: 4.5/5
In three days it will be exactly three years since the much-talked-about Postojna gig that brought the veterans of the Slovenian hard ‘n heavy scene, Requiem, back from the dead. After that show the future of the »reunion« was still a bit uncertain, but today it’s perfectly clear that Requiem are firmly rooted in the Slovenian music world again as a gem of homegrown hard rock/heavy metal. After a string of hugely successful gigs that took them across Slovenian stages and built a solid, loyal fan base, they’ve now crowned their comeback with a new, fifth studio album. After Zadnja molitev, this time they reached into the heavens themselves and pulled down a Fallen Angel, who hit Earth as a fiery meteor, and out of the cloud of ash and dust Fallen Angel rises like a Phoenix.
Fallen Angel picks up the story right where Zadnja molitev left off. The album is again heavier and focused on crushing heavy metal, though of course there’s no shortage of nods to the band’s roots, which are firmly anchored in the classic hard rock of the seventies and eighties. This time Requiem greet us with a »Helloween-style« intro, My Little Bottle of Arsenic, which sounds like the wet dream of a insanely brilliant comic-book supervillain, and then they stomp the gas pedal to the floor with the first heavy metal crusher, Let It Hurt. With it, Requiem sink their teeth in from the very first moments of the album, with sharp hammers, spiked riffs, cannon-fire drumming and a vocal performance »par excellence.« Sergej »Sergio« Škofljanec steals all the attention with a superb take on a thousand tiny voices screaming at once inside a schizophrenic’s head, and the blood gets pumping with Sergej’s brilliant evil laugh at the start, a fantastic, arsenic-contagious chorus and the adrenaline-wound tension of the track. The distinct, crystal-clear production finally makes Requiem sound on a studio record the way they can sound live – there are pompous choruses full of explosive energy, riffs sharp as a scalpel, stunning solos, artillery-like drumming and stunning vocals! But Requiem weren’t satisfied with just the best-sounding record of their career, because the songs on the album are bursting with the magical energy we’re otherwise used to from the band’s live shows. The cynical anthem Slovenska is a single that’s already crawled under the skin, and you can’t get tired of it, partly thanks to a spectacular solo from the fingers of Matjaž Marin, who proves with his contribution that he’s completely settled into the lineup and that the role of an excellent lead guitarist, complementing Marko Slokar’s solid rhythm foundation, fits him like a glove. With the title track Fallen Angels, Requiem wade into epic mid-tempo waters, enriched by a noble touch of classic Rainbow and by our homegrown »siren« Škofjanec, who, judging by what he shows here, can easily match vocal titans like Bruce Dickinson and Ronnie James Dio, and who mercilessly rips up your ears with inhuman falsettos several times over the course of the record. With Parazit the guys take us into Whitesnake-style blues waters, complete with fitting guitar and vocal lines. Parazit isn’t my favorite, but it’s an interesting experiment we’re not used to from Requiem, and if nothing else it shakes up the album and lets us catch our breath for a moment, because Stranger In Me plunges us right back into the whirlwind of hard-hitting heavy metal. In the second half of the record Requiem play in their own style with a mix of classic hard rock and heavy metal, which bubbles to the surface in the Deep Purple-style Red Leather and the playful Začaraj me, which could easily have found its place on any of their earlier records, and one of the album’s best moments comes with the razor-sharp The Wolf’s Tale, whose fat, groovy riffs at times recall Bruce Dickinson’s solo work (especially Accident of Birth). Requiem are of course unimaginable without gorgeous ballads, and in that department they don’t disappoint this time either – the soulfully sung Hold On may not yet be able to compete with classics like Ker te ni or Kaja, but I have a feeling the song will age like a good wine. If we’d been resting up to that point, the closing tracks dose us with arsenic again, ahem, adrenaline: Little Princess thanks to an excellent chorus and a fantastic solo, and the nitroglycerin-soaked crusher All Night Long with a classic Iron Maiden feel, mainly because of a well-placed »sing-a-long« »oooooo« section and an epically good chorus. The record closes with a bonus track, the ballad Keesong (Forever Free), which, with just Sergej’s voice over acoustic guitar, is the album’s biggest departure, so it’s quickly clear why it earned its »status« as a bonus track.
Fallen Angel is an upgrade on Zadnja molitev in every way, and at the same time a record that shows Requiem in the form of their lives – few bands manage, after more than fifteen years of activity, to record an album that easily surpasses everything before it. Requiem pulled that off with Fallen Angel, the new requiem of Slovenian heavy metal. I do miss a longer epic in the vein of Križarji, since the songs average between three and four minutes, but the guys have to leave something for the next record, right?
Lineup
Sergej Škofljanec – vocals, acoustic guitar
Martin Rozman – bass, backing vocals
Matjaž Marin – lead guitar
Marko Slokar – rhythm guitar, backing vocals
Miha Nedoh – drums
Production
Sergej Škofljanec
Tracklist
1. My Little Bottle of Arsenic – Intro
2. Let It Hurt
3. Slovenska
4. Fallen Angels
5. Parazit
6. Stranger In Me
7. Red Leather
8. Začaraj me
9. The Wolf’s Tale
10. Hold On
11. Little Princess
12. All Night Long
13. Keesong (Forever Free) – Bonus track
