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Royal Hunt - The Watchers CD (album) cover

THE WATCHERS

Royal Hunt

 

Progressive Metal

3.62 | 25 ratings

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progrules
Prog Reviewer
4 stars I would like to do the review about the band and the epical opening track and just a little bit about the others because they are not really significant (or even new) at all.

I already expressed my opinion about this bands existence in my review of Moving Target, by far their best album ever. I said there that this is a very intriguing band because they are from Denmark, are highly religious and play prog metal and also appear to be very popular in a.o. Japan. So if that isn't interesting I don't know what is. How on earth does a band of religiously orientated musicians come up with the idea to play prog metal ? It's an almost unbelievable combination. But in all fairness, this isn't really the most unpolished metal you will ever hear. It's tending towards heavy prog, it's extremely melodic and in the end it's mainly loud music, I wouldn't really want to call this prog metal in due form. I do know this is very much my cup of tea. And that's in fact despite their religious background because I'm not a religious person at all. I just love their music very much.

Next I want to talk about the epical opening track. And this is because we are talking about one of the greatest songs ever and of course that's just according to my personal taste but of course that's always the thing with ones reviewing, it's just one's taste. When I first heard Intervention I can only say: it blew me away completely ! The song starts with a sort of military exercise, a superior calling commands or something like that (resembling Battlefields of Counterpane by Grey Lady Down by the way) before after a while the music comes marching in or better said: raging in. An unbelievable hurricane of sound sets in especially if you play this one loud you will not believe what's happening ! It's extremely energetic for the next (far over) 10 minutes but it's still versatile and the build up is really superb. Also on this song there are very religious lyrics to be heard (Down on my knees for you father is an often heard phrase) but as I so often say, I'm not really bothered by lyrics and also in this case the music is the dominant factor for me. I would recommend anyone who likes the louder music to check out this great track. Later on on the album there's also the radio edit version but that's left pale in the background compared to the epical version.

The other tracks are average Royal Hunt material which means still great but also inferior to the brilliant opener. It can mean only one outcome: one outstanding track accompanied by good others is simply 4 stars for me.

progrules | 4/5 |

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