Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Europe
Label: UDR
Release: 2015
Running time: 49:04
Rating: 4/5
The tenth studio album from Swedish hard rock veterans Europe, titled “War of Kings”, was recorded at PanGaia studio in Stockholm, Sweden, under the production baton of Dave Cobb (Rival Sons), with John Netti also on board as engineer.
The eleven new songs keep the band’s perfect knack for catchy melody, while also being charged with the high-octane voltage of authentic hard rock energy, spiked with a core of blues. It’s a dark, brooding record. Compared to »Bag of Bones«, the blues component generally doesn’t jut out quite as sharply in the songs on the new album, which doesn’t mean Europe have somehow hacked the blues elements out of »War of Kings«. The new album brings a sense of greater musical weight, let’s even say a sharper melodic definition, than »Bag of Bones«. After the experimenting with sound on the post-millennium albums, and the turning point through »Last Look at Eden« and »Bag of Bones«, where the band first found the right organic sound and looked back to its musical roots, the new album brings back a feeling of greater melodic infectiousness in soaring choruses, which Europe were absolutely brimming with at the peak of their commercial success. But times are different now. The melody develops above all through a seriously dark atmosphere, where a sense of anxiety and loneliness is never far away. This is a very melancholic album. The songs are, as a rule, built on minor keys. Once again the band makes no secret of its eternal fascination with, and inspiration from, rock ‘n’ roll giants like Deep Purple and Rainbow. The grip of John Norum’s organically rustic, fat-sounding guitar combined with the chunky lines of the Hammond organ is the basic form of a massive wall of sound, into which Tempest’s striking vocals are pressed. And the closing Light Me Up, with its added funk element, expresses a tantalizing link between some of the band’s members and their past collaboration with Glenn Hughes. Light Me Up boasts an exceptionally dramatic final third, where the melancholy comes roaring back in full force and brings the album to a cathartic moment. The bond between the Hammond sound and Norum’s guitar playing remains one of the band’s great charms, even in their later years.
The new album clearly shows the band’s core in its search for a principle of raw, authentic realization of the feelings that flow through the musicians the moment they want to bring a given emotion to life through playing. Its predecessor »Bag of Bones« was already that genuine. One of the most intimate moments, as far as the message of the lyrics goes, is the song Priase You, and in the second half of the album it’s joined by the extremely sensual Angles (with Broken Hearts). In both songs the band takes on sharp swings of mood, rippling from delicately organic shades, where John Norum, with a wealth of finesse in his guitar embellishments, and the passionately emotive Joey Tempest flirt with the blues in an especially intimate way, to a massively distorted riff hyperplasia (in Praise You)!
With its heap of arabesques in the lead motifs, the song Rainbow Bridge naturally evokes a classic like Stargazer (Rainbow), and maybe that’s why the band gave it such a title. If you get your hands on the limited edition, you’ll be greeted right at the tail end of the album by the instrumental Vasastan as a bonus track. Norum takes center stage in it. It’s a superb instrumental, worth the investment in the “digipack” version of the album alone!
That »War of Kings« is a very dark, let’s say melancholic, but thoroughbred hard rock album is already announced by the opening title track. What it doesn’t announce is that this is a collection of tracks of remarkably even quality, with no wavering in arrangement or in ideas. Europe have obviously found a great deal of inspiration and created an album that is highly dynamic and vividly convincing in its core motifs.
»War of Kings« shows off the band’s wealth of experience, and with the new album Europe hold on to the career credibility built by the string of solid studio efforts from their first era. »Bag of Bones« put the band back on that track, and »War of Kings« does more than just keep it there. It’s an exceptionally beautiful and polished record that doesn’t skimp on genuine emotion and sensitive, finely tuned playing. The new songs have the pedigree to be excellent glue in the concert setlists, when Europe play them live alongside the most recognizable classics of their career.
Line-up
Joey Tempest – vocals
John Norum – guitar
Mic Michaeli – keyboards
John Leven – bass guitar
Ian Haugland – drums
Production
Dave Cobb
Track list
01. War Of Kings
02. Hole In My Pocket
03. The Second Day
04. Praise You
05. Nothin’ To Ya
06. California 405
07. Days Of Rock n Roll
08. Children Of The Mind
09. Rainbow Bridge
10. Angels (With Broken Hearts)
11. Light It Up
