Artist: Gamma Ray
Label: Ear Music Records
Release: 2010
Runtime: 48:21
Rating: 4/5
And the time has come for a new Gamma Ray album. Let’s pull the final verdict out of our sleeve right away: more inspired than the band’s last two studio efforts and closer in spirit to the back-to-back trio of ”No World Order!” (2001), “Powerplant” (1999) and ”Somewhere Out In Space” (1998). Gamma Ray have now been in an unchanged lineup for 12 years running. That lineup earned itself a top pedigree and real standing on the power metal scene, especially in the stretch between 1998 and 2001, a scene that, let’s be honest, is less in favor today, and less interesting to the wider metal crowd, who swear mostly by the more extreme branches of the genre. But let’s not cry over spilled milk. These are cycles, and they turn at their own pace. Maybe the album title “To The Metal”, worn-out phrase and all, is exactly what heralds a new cycle.
“To The Metal” is a great album that puts Gamma Ray back among their best days. Sure, it no longer offers content as exciting as what we got at the turn of the millennium, but it’s nowhere near drowning in a sea of recycled, tried-and-tested motifs (“Majestic”, 2005), or the blatant borrowing of other bands’ classic moves, Iron Maiden above all, which wasn’t hard to spot on “Land Of The Free pt. II” (2007).
The opener Empathy shocks with its drama. It hits hard and unfriendly, with zero sucking up, no warning. Straight down the shortest line, with a direct right hook! Empathy is especially interesting for some of its melodic guitar ornaments with a touch of “arabesque”, which underlines the icy, apocalyptic atmosphere of the song with a nice dose of evil. The chorus is typical “Gamma Ray-style”. Morbida cuts firmly into the mood, especially thanks to the juicy production and the way the mid-tempo plays out. The riffs sound cataclysmic and puffed up, the rhythm grips tight and squeezes the guitar riffing to its chest. But the most interesting thing about these observations is the cranked-up bass line, the likes of which you can’t recall in this kind of power metal production in Gamma Ray’s career, where the sound is usually led by sharpened-up guitars and the rolling of double-bass drum “bulls”. The bass line is clearly and distinctly audible on the album more than once, which enriches the sonic dynamics and the drama of the songs themselves. Empathy is also interesting because it isn’t a speed-driven number, which is what you’d expect in the album’s opening slot. Later on the album, the song Mother Angel comes close to Empathy with very similar energy, arrangement and production, and it flirts even more heavily with the roots of the classic Judas Priest riff.
In the song with the cheerful chorus, Time To Live, Zimmermann impresses with his virtuosity and the occasional escapade of weaving in triplets to liven up the work of the double-bass drum pedals (verse).
All You Need To Know, the second song in a row featuring the “perfumed Buddhist, cleansed of metal” Michael Kiske (ex-Helloween, Place Vendome), conjures up a typical anthemic melody in the chorus, close to the melodies of Edguy or what we hear in the Avantasia project. Kiske’s timbre contributes a lot here, and it falls into the same category as Tobias Sammet’s, the Edguy singer. Because of the borrowed word order in the chorus lines, someone might get snagged on the song One With The World (“Sigh No More”, 1991). This is Michael Kiske’s second collaboration with Gamma Ray since 1996, when Kiske contributed lead vocals to the song Time To Break Free (“Land Of The Free”, 1996).
The contrast between the venomously fast, arrogant verse, led on vocals by Hansen, and the pomp of the chorus itself in All You Need To Know is something we can follow in the album’s other songs too. Classic Gamma Ray packaging, you could say. That packaging is draped over Shine Forever. Here the band steps on the gas even harder in the verse and actually reaches the album’s top speed and peak aggression at this point. As such, it would have worked especially well lighting the fuse in the number 1 slot of this album’s track order. The way Hansen sings in the Shine Forever verse proves why this master can still play the Helloween classic Ride The Sky on stages around the world today. The addition of “cookie monster” vocals to Kai Hansen’s basic melodic singing in the verse shows that the current growing fondness for extreme forms of metal has briefly touched Gamma Ray too. A smart bit of variety. The string of “aggressive verse – melodic chorus” contrasts is followed by Deadlands. The melody of the opening motif even briefly pulls toward the melody of the Helloween song Where The Rain Grows (1994), but the full Gamma Ray figure is right back with us immediately after. Chasing Shadows has no trouble making it into this category either, and after the more direct Deadlands it keeps effectively holding a high level of excellent balance between punch, epic pomp and melodic spotlighting of the lead motifs. The middle section’s fleeting dialogue of fiery guitar solos and keyboards (yes, keyboards!) recalls Stratovarius tricks, but the trick is used in “traces”. Like a welcome spice. Hansen bites angrily on vocals throughout, and his icy, high-pitched voice, with a pinch of that signature raspiness, intensely creates the desired zone of maximum reach for the Gamma Ray metal form. Rise, in the first few seconds of its opening on bass guitar, brings to mind the Iron Maiden tune in the song The Clansman. It’s another wrecking ball, where the band once again develops the described contrast more than effectively.
From the paragraph above you may already be guessing that the songs are crafted to perfection, reaching melodic polish in the lead motifs and high-contrast variety. So this time it’s hard to single out the album’s highlights, and picking personal favorites is entirely a matter of each listener’s individual musical perception. And trust me, picking favorites is going to be pretty tough this time.
Let’s not forget the song To The Metal, with its mid-tempo “blacksmith” rhythm, which somewhat unfortunately invites comparisons to the by-now thoroughly faded and “dumbly childish” Manowar muscle-pumping chants. There’s nothing wrong with the song itself, since it serves its true purpose and isn’t the first in the band’s series of such attempts (Heavy Metal Universe, “Powerplant”, 1999), but it makes for a less interesting point on the album. If you listen closely to the riff in the verse, it’s not hard to guess that something similar already adorns the song Metal Gods by Judas Priest.
The closing No Need To Cry is an attempt to revive the energy of the song Shine On from the album “Somewhere Out In Space” (1998). The song is a less successful affair, in which the band loses the thread amid the acoustic arrangements of the calmer middle section (especially the hoarse vocals of bassist Dirk Schlaechter pushing too far into the foreground). Overall, the vocal harmonies laid over the “unplugged” backing come off rather dreary. Definitely a song that sticks out a bit on the album with its varied structure, and it brings a peculiarity of its own to the Gamma Ray catalog. Fans of the band don’t need to worry too much here, though, as sooner or later they’ll make friends with it without much trouble. The band has probably concluded themselves that this is a detour on the album, which is why No Need To Cry sensibly sits at the end.
“To The Metal” has successfully escaped the feeling that clung to Gamma Ray in recent years: that they’re burnt out, that time ran them over, and that they’ll never again reach the level of their golden days of creativity. The classic verse-chorus songwriting, which felt tired and less inspired on the previous two albums and clearly suffered from an acute case of self-repetition of “what’s already been said”, has been given a heap of interesting transitions again, along with masterfully seasoned instrumental middle sections that thrill with their sheer high virtuosity and the sparkling solo interplay of the Hansen/Richter guitar duo. That puts the new album very close to the most interesting Gamma Ray albums! Still less varied and witty than “Powerplant”, but a more complexly structured album than the more directly conceived “No World Order!”. “To The Metal” couldn’t define the classic “power metal” principle in 2010 any better, with its roots on German soil. A must for all devotees of the genre and for everyone who has “accidentally” forgotten today how to serve up a seductive mix of arrogance and punch in metal, with maximum payoff from the melody on offer!
Lineup
Kai Hansen – vocals, guitar
Henjo Richter – guitar, keyboards
Dirk Schlächter – bass guitar, vocals on track no. 10
Dan Zimmermann – drums
GUEST MUSICIANS:
Michael Kiske – vocals on track no. 2
Nadine Nottbohm – backing vocals on tracks no. 2 and 6
Corvin Bahn – keyboards
Production
Dirk Schlächter & Kai Hansen
Track list
1. Empathy
2. All You Need To Know
3. Time To Live
4. To The Metal
5. Rise
6. Mother Angel
7. Shine Forever
8. Deadlands
9. Chasing Shadows
10. No Need To Cry
