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Rating: Joey Tempest, a singer with a remarkable stage presence, and the band known as Europe, are ready for battle. On March 3rd, get ready to tremble, but don't worry, it will be a tremor caused by the powerful hard rock of the Swedish band behind the highly awarded Final Countdown. The five hard rockers have announced that a new CD is ready. The album will feature tracks imbued with the musical spirit that marked them when they were just kids; that is, the time when they dreamed of touring the world with their songs.
Back then, all five teenagers thought their passion was as great as their chances of not making it. Then, as (not) always happens, their overwhelming talent - it was the notorious '80s - brought them to the attention of the public, ready to idolize them: the reality of screaming girls, and boys authorized to mimic them while they sang Rock the Night, convinced them that they had become rock royalty. In the '90s, the exhausting tours and the pressure from the record label, which wanted them to replicate the sales of Final Countdown, led to the disbandment of the Europe adventure. The five kings bid each other farewell. Meanwhile, Cobain was bringing around a new musical sensibility: grunge was supplanting everything that had been done in rock until then.
The third millennium, however, surpassed the grunge hybridization - a genre somewhat decadent and without great evolutionary prospects - Tempest sounds the assembly, and the five rock templars start blowing into their trumpets, excuse me, guitars and drums!
This is how some excellent LPs were born, leading up to War of Kings: almost a self-citation. At the ANSA agency, the frontman Joey declared, on one hand, and it is not clear why, that the times of The Final Countdown and Carrie are distant, on the other, that the tracks of War of Kings represent their outlook on the future. More precisely, he talked about the Hammond organ, Mellotron, and blues guitars regarding the instrumental presence. Then, he mentioned bands that dazzle the ears for their historical value in rock: Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, and Deep Purple above all. And others. Well, the 12 tracks of War of Kings pay homage to the illustrious names mentioned, but perhaps the five risk forgetting someone - at least from their point of view - more important: the Europe.
The Europe seem to be following the fate of Renoir: after inventing Expressionism, he began self-criticism and studying the classics. For the Europe who are the classics? Exactly the bands mentioned before. A curiosity, the title War of Kings was borrowed from a work by Frans G. Bengtsson. In any case: long live the kings and their new album!
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