EYEWITNESS

ROYAL HUNT is a well-known name in the hard rock genre and they have sold over a million albums worldwide. ROYAL HUNT's music is complex with memorable melodies and catchy choruses, and at times you can label the music melodic heavy metal. They are very good musicians, especially the keyboard player, multi-instrumentalist and composer Andre Andersen. John West is among the better vocalists around, and his voice is a mix between Ian Gillan and Glenn Hughes.

ROYAL HUNT's latest album "Eye Witness" is as far as I know their seventh album. It has a main theme or a concept based on an idea of "What's the media feeding us with today?", and the album cover follows the same concept. Although the amount of albums they've sold I can't really understand why they seems to be a band that a lot of people know about, but very few have heard.

"Eye Witness" is however a really, really good album although I had expected a little bit more. I hoped that I could give this album a top rating but now they only comes close to it. Some compositions tends to get a little too mainstream for my taste, but I'm sure that it will be well received by the die-hard fans. ROYAL HUNT is after all one of the best bands in this genre.

This one can't absolutely not be compared with excellent previous albums like MOVING TARGET, PARADOX or THE MISSION. Okay there might be a concept behind it, but I don't care at all, because the music is mainly very ordinary mainstream power metal. Nothing special at all.Not worth more than 2 stars, even this is still generously!

This is a very pleasant metal album. It would be an excellent addition to any metal collection, but it's not really a progressive album like their 90s albums, so they get one star less than they would deserve from a metal standpoint.

The tracks are all quite ok, no fillers. The production is very good, with the guitars and vocals dominating the mix.

There are a few standout tracks: Wicked Lounge has extremely cool lyrics and saxophone, a very laid back track compared to their usual neo-classical prog metal. The Prayer features church organ and majestic vocal arrangements ... their singer is phenomenal. Most of the other tracks are power metal songs with occasional glimpses of neo-classical interludes and solos on synth and guitar.

The music of Royal Hunt has for some reason attracted me in a way that I enjoy the music flow and its keyboard-drenched arrangements. As for "Eyewitness", there is nothing so peculiar about this album that I can SELL to you. Everything flows naturally from opening track to end of the album and every song sounds good to me. I cannot lie to myself and (of course) to you that nothing is so specific about this album especially if you have been listening to Royal Hunt's music. This album offers (still) melodic metal in relatively soft riffs but maintaining relatively medium to fast tempo.

The opening track "Hunted" (5:02) lands easily into my ears and it creates an uplifting mood for me especially like today, very early in the morning, I feel like being energized with this happy-go-lucky song. It's like "begin the day with a high motivation, conquers all obstacles during the day you might face .!!!". Well, it's basically that kind of nuance regardless the actual content of the lyrical passage the gentlemen in the band have written. Hey, music is emotion, my friend! Sometimes, we don't need to understand what the band intends to convey the message through a song - we just need to interpret for our own context and purpose! Why? Because we purchased the CD and they created the music for us, the customers. Let the music flows into our mind.

"Can't Let Go" (5:02 is another straight-forward rocker with excellent groove and great guitar solo. I really enjoy this track. "The Prayer" (3:29) brings forward church organ at opening part followed with excellent vocal harmonies. Through "The Edge Of the World" (6:14) the band brings us to another upbeat music with attractive guitar riffs. This song has a right balance of simple composition and melody line. Wooohhhaaa . it's a nice song to sing a long ". at the edge of the world ." . so rocking! "Burning The Sun" (6:10) is another rocking track with excellent guitar riffs, melodic vocal line and nice keyboard work. "Wicked Lounge" (3:49) starts off with electric piano intro followed with vocal line in ballad style.

"Fifth Element" (4:10) is an excellent composition with excellent combination of clavinet and guitar riffs. The intro part is really good especially when guitar solo enters the music. This is an instrumental track with various styles combining inventive keyboard work of Andre Andersen and guitar solo of Jacob Kjaer. Oh man . this is the best track of this album. I imagine if I hold a progressive rock program on an FM Radio I would start the program with this track! "Help Us God" (4:47) continues the music with another excellent melody and beautiful guitar melody augmented with keyboard. "Game of Fear" (4:33) starts off with drum solo followed with tight bass lines and then guitar riffs. Keyboard sound (unique to Royal Hunt) follows really well. Lead vocal enters the music in high register notes. The title track concludes the album beautifully through nice acoustic guitar fills and nice vocal. The concluding track is mellow in style at halfway through of the track. The music blasts loudly in the middle, combining great keyboard and guitar riffs.

I would say that this is a very good album in terms of composition, combining keyboard and guitar in a balance way - sometimes keyboard plays more than guitar - resulting good harmony. It's a very enjoyable album accessible to many people especially those in rock and metal vein. Keep on proggin' ..!

Peace on earth and mercy mild - GW

What's wrong with this album? Sometimes when you spot an ugly cover it´s bad news. And surely Eyewitness is one. It's my least favorite CD of the entire Royal Hunt diiscography. Well, nothing's really wrong, when you hear it with hindsight. The problem is, after the Mission and The Watchers you'd expect them to produce a more progressive sound and that's exactly what you don't get with Eyewitness. It seems that the band reached a point where they did not really know what to do next. And the concept album about the (bad) press turned out to be an almost totally power metal CD, with very little prog on it. Strives inside the band may be a reason for this rather disjointed result (original bassist Steen Mogensen and guitar player Jacob Kjaer both quit at the same time Eyewitness was released, after a decade playing in RH) .

It looked like Andre Andersen tried to do something different this time to hold things together, and that may explains such an awkward song as Wicked Lounge to be included here, with its piano bar sound and saxophone solo. The rest of the tunes are actually good but, at the time, quite a disapointement since it sounded a lot like a (or two) step back in terms of style and compositions. They certainly have done better CDs, before and after. Still, I must say I liked it, and I still enjoy it when I'm in the mood to hear some fine power metal songs with great keyboards arrangements and the usual powerful vocal delivery by John West. But it is highly different from their other works, and hardly adds anything to their history.

If you like that style fo music I recommend it, but this is definitly not the CD to start with this great band. Rating: something between 2 and 2 and half stars.

Royal Hunt 8th studio album and forth with John West behind the mic was a pleasent listning for me. Released in 2003 on Frontiers records in digipack format the album named Eyewitness is a good album, but the magic moments like on Moving target or Paradox are gone, only good symphonic prog metal we find here. I like a lot John West voice, very powerful and fiting very well in this kind of music. I like him In Artension and I like him here in Royal Hunt. The album is very symphonic prog metal, with bombastic arrangements, a thing that Royal Hunt done in the past, but the compositions suffers from great ideas, I mean is an usual album from this genre. Anyway Andre Andersen, one of my fav keybordist from prog metal, did again a great job, his style is easy to recognize and he put here aswell a rounded sound aswell. All pieces stands as good, not a weak moment, but nothing realy excellent either. I will rate this with 3 stars, not desearving lower grade, at least for me, I have almost all their albums, minus last two , and I can compare with the future release Paper blood better then this and with past albums, aswell better then Eyewitness. Anyway great band that desearve a wider recognition from prog metal listners.