Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Pell, Axel Rudi
Label: SPV Records
Release: 2018
Runtime: 58:13
Rating: 4/5
Well, today the eighteenth studio album from a veteran of the German hard rock and metal scene, esteemed guitar virtuoso and composer Axel Rudi Pell, officially dropped. It’s called »Knights Call« and its intro, The Medieva Overture, is titled very tellingly. It departs from the typical baroque-frilly intro Axel usually puts on albums. It reeks of the »melodiousness« of medieval troubadours, meaning its nature comes across as mildly »folksy«. The album then opens up in »ARP style! With the highly vibrant catalyst The Wild And the Young.
»Wild and young«, then. It’s clear Axel feels that way all the time, regardless of the mature, almost 58 years racked up to this day. Axel stays the eternal youth, and with that the look of the albums remains an absolute constant of expressive quality . Not Status Quo, not Motrohead and not AC/DC, but Axel Rudi Pell. If you’re looking for someone who has been recycling a musical dossier from record to record so effectively and skillfully for almost thirty years now, it’s none other than Axel Rudi Pell.
Good thing that Axel Rudi Pell generally plays proven standards live and works only two tracks from the freshly released album into the set, because Gioeli could easily swap one chorus for another mid-song — there’s a whole horde of them following the same layout of chords and melodies, as well as rhythmic keys — and so unwittingly slide into one of Pell’s older songs. I know I’m getting »sarcastically venomous«, but still, I just can’t get over how Gioeli on vocals doesn’t mix up songs that are almost identical.
Axel remains a great master of creating drama theater on the new album too. »Knights Call« is also extremely epic, extremely pompous and bombastically grabs you in an instant and crawls under your skin. In the songs the band once again develops optimal musical agreeableness, so the songs work on first listen. They grab you right away. Add the recognizable character of typical Pell production and success can’t fail to follow.
Beyond the Light is a new ballad with which Pell deftly fills the running time for ballad compilation no. 6, which will be served up to the music public in the coming years. Otherwise the band explodes again. No need to point out that the dominant figure is of course Axel’s unchanging guitar texture, where the guitar qualities are once again universally fascinating and bravura. Keyboardist Ferdy Dorneberg also gets plenty of room, showing off in Truth And Lie his great skill in handling the rhetoric of integrating Hammond organ into rock’n’roll. The concept of the composition, which is far from the only one in the ARP discography, reveals that in some other story Acel Rudi Pell could have created a perfect »tribute to Rainbow« and/or »tribute to Deep Purple« band. On this album the closing track is of course once again the most prominent epic of the record. It’s Tower of Babylon, steeped in arabesques, the darkest-sounding track on the album, and of course it works like a distant descendant of the likes of Stargazer and Kashmir. A highly dramatic ending to the album. Expected. In fact, with this number the drama theater hits its album peak, a proven trick that always sparks something in the listener and makes them crave another spin of the record.
What’s new compared to its predecessor “Game of Sins”? Heh, that’s down to each listener’s ears. To this reviewer, it sounds a touch more mysterious and mystical, for instance. Stylistic departures are about as likely as a divine genesis. In other words, zero. One otherwise doesn’t know what else to write when Axel Rudi Pell releases a new album, other than that it’s yet another typical album from this musical wizard and that it’s once again exceptionally consistent in compositional terms, highly atmospheric and of course extremely good!
Line-up
Johnny Gioeli – vocals, backing vocals
Axel Rudi Pell – all guitars
Ferdy Doernberg – keyboards
Volker Krawczak – bass guitar
Bobby Rondinelli – drums
Production
Axel Rudi Pell
Tracklist
01. The Medieval Overture (Intro) (1:43)
02. The Wild And The Young (4:20)
03. Wildest Dreams (5:43)
04. Long Live Rock (5:34)
05. The Crusaders Of Doom (8:01)
06. Truth And Lies (4:48)
07. Beyond The Light (7:45)
08. Slaves On The Run (5:13)
09. Follow The Sun (5:12)
10. Tower Of Babylon (9:50)
