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Royal Hunt - Paradox

Artist:	Royal Hunt
Title:	Paradox
Label:	Magna Carta MA-9017-2
Length(s):	55 minutes
Year(s) of release:	1997
Month of review:	02/1998

Line up

Jacob Kjaer - guitar
Steen Mogensen - bass
D.C. Cooper - vocal
Andre Andersen - keyboards, guitars
a guest musician, Allan Sorensen, takes care of the drumming.

Tracks

1)	The Awakening	1.39
2)	River Of Pain	7.14
3)	Tearing Down The World	5.32
4)	Message To God	6.41
5)	Long Way Home	5.54
6)	Time Will Tell	9.31
7)	Silent Scream	6.13
8)	It's Over	6.15
9)	Martial Arts	1.49
10)	The Final Lullabye	4.01

Summary

Described to me by someone as pomprock this is my first encounter with this Magna Carta band. The album features two bonus tracks but I'm not sure with respect to what they can be called such. Is this maybe a rerelease or something or is this album also released on tape/lp?

The music

After the windy opening The Awakening the album continues bombastically with River Of Pain. The song has also a bombastic chorus with some female backing vocals. The music is not very complicated and seems to be typical pomprock. In the middle there's a very quick synth intermezzo with some off-beat classical touches even, working up to crescendo with fast bass drums and plenty of variation. In fact, the music can be compared quite well to Dream Theater, maybe a little less technical and more obviously pomprock because of the very American harmonies, but still the thought lingers. We move right into Tearing Down The World with stringlike synths and fastpaced drums and guitars. The chorus is a little simple and melodically the song is not as interesting as the previous one, but there's some driven playing here. The classical influences (a la Malmsteen) also stay throughout the song. After a pianic intro we get some heavy basswork and some guitarwork reminiscent of Saga. In this song, the band wrongly blames God for the burning of witches (I'd say, if anyone is to blame it is the church and in my opinion church and God are two). Again this is a catchy bombastic rocking track with some nice melodies and again with many violin like synths. Long Way Home is a ballad with acoustic guitars and (synthetic) flute. A moody ballad it certainly is, but it's quite appealing. Towards the end the song becomes as bombastic as I'm already used to. Very nice. Then we come to the long Time Will Tell, which offers little more than what we have already heard, but fortunately it is varied enough. The lyrics are full of self pity. The closing part is probably nicked from somewhere. Silent Scream and It's Over have in common that they have an appealing chorus, but on the whole the songs are too similar to what has been heard already and Long Way Home even reoccurs here. The fast paced Martial Arts is the first bonus track with very quick keys. More a showing of technical prowess than anything else. The last track The Final Lullabye is nice, but not strikingly so.

Conclusion

One might say that Royal Hunt is a driven, more melodic and bombastic version of Yngwie Malmsteen where the role of the guitar is somewhat taken over by the keyboards of Andersen. This means that the music has quite a lot of classical stylings and Andersen also has a tendency to throw in a lot of violin like synths. The overall sound is quite bombastic close to AOR and pomprock, but rather fast paced for this, with often quite appealing melodies. The music is a little polished and selfsimilar for prog lovers. Still, a professional sounding album, and I prefer selfsimilar compositions over directionless ones. Still, some variety in approach to their music is invited.