I have a love/hate relationship with bands like Grave Digger, or indeed their contemporaries such as Running Wild, Blind Guardian and Helloween.
On the one hand, the soaring, epic imagery conjured in their songs is hard to ignore, causing even the staunchest opponent of this flavour of Euro-Metal to want to don their best battle helms and ride across fields of glory to an awaiting battle/large breasted Valkyrie/honourable death (choose your own adventure). On the other hand, the tropes about them are, unfortunately, mostly true: fromage-laden lyrics, formulaic choruses and the finest of twin guitar wankery.
Grave Digger’s new release, Symbol of Eternity, delivers pretty much what you expect it to in that regard. Continuing on the band’s previous efforts in offering a semi-concept album based upon the Crusades, Grave Digger certainly are ‘writing what they know’.
Starting off with ‘Battle Cry’, (not to be confused with the Judas Priest song of the same name), the band deliver a fast paced, slickly polished slice of thrashy power metal. Its reminiscent of a lot recent fare by any one of the 100 cookie cutter bands that Tim ‘Ripper’ Owens is part of, which is both its strength and weakness, and sets the tone for the album – things start to crescendo and get interesting…and then fail to deliver.
‘Hell Is My Purgatory’ follows up with Steve Harris like bass riffery, sounds promising! Then the song doesn’t really go anywhere. As a side note it’s hard not to find English-as-a-second-language singers pronouncing words ever so slightly incorrectly endearing (purjatory anyone?).
Pretty much every song from here on out follows its own formula: some great ideas, some tasty riffs and some great chops, but never quite hitting the mark. Some songs like ‘King of Kings’ and ‘Heart of a Warrior’ have some chunky, excellent sounding riffs, but ultimately remain a bit forgettable. Other songs like the title track and ‘Grace of God’ sound great, but then are suddenly marred by odd sounding creative choices such as pretty acoustic sections suddenly being attacked by Chris Boltendahl’s Oscar the Grouch-esque vocals, or sudden introductions of medieval-esque ‘Hey Nonny Nonny’ sections. One can’t deny the feel and theme they’re going for, and, with the odd instrumental track to set the tone occasionally it definitely is an album with a definitive atmosphere.
The band certainly sound tight, and the production is slick and modern, albeit it relatively similar to most German power metal these days. However, some cracks do appear. The drums are tight, but, relatively uninteresting, with exception to ‘Holy Warfare’. The guitars sound great throughout, although there are some solos that sound a wee bit digitally edited and copy/pasted together. The vocals are dark and brooding with that thrash edge that you’ve come to love from euro-metal of this ilk, but seem lacking in variation and range.
I actually found that one of my favourite tracks on the record was the bonus cover of ‘Hellas Hellas’ by Greek star Vasilis Papakonstantinou. It’s fun, bouncy and entirely out of place with the rest of the album. The fact that it’s relegated to bonus track status is totally understandable given the themes on the album proper, but, were this a more straight forward record I could totally see it being a great single.
Ultimately, Symbol Of Eternity is one of Grave Digger’s best albums in recent years, but, glory is just out of reach. To continue the Crusades theme, it’s like they’ve found the Arc of The Covenant, only to keep their eyes open and have their faces melted (and not in a good way).
(7/10 Dave Hartley)
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