Royal Hunt
Collision Course

Royal Hunt 
Collision Course 
Frontiers Records, 2008 
Progressive Rock/Metal 

If Royal Hunt were the bizarre name of a person, and not that of a Danish band dedicated to progressive heavy metal/hard rock, they would be old enough to vote in the Italian Senate. The group boasts a respectable résumé with the beauty of 11 albums... Now, like many Wikipedia reviewers these days, I could continue to write at least a dozen lines of elegant CtrlC CtrlV to try to make you understand that I really know this band and that consequently I am able to position, based on a sort of objective comparative metric, their latest effort relative to the impressive discography they have behind them. I would convince you of this by talking about the compositional flair of the keyboardist André Andersen and so on; it's a shame it would be bullshit!!!

I have indeed often heard about Royal Hunt and, in the vast majority of cases, almost always in enthusiastic terms, but I have never deepened my knowledge of them. The adult and frustrated jerks who talked about them to me with arrogant snootiness, looking down at me from a skyscraper, had always made me understand that I would not grasp their music. I grew up and decidedly ignored Royal Hunt until yesterday when I saw their latest work prominently displayed, sufficiently intriguing in its artwork.

In some ways this CD clashes, quite a bit, with my current desire to explore shores different from those of my recent past and takes me back a handful of years when I adored pompous music, with vocals that were rigorously powerful, crystalline, and capable of reaching great heights. "Collision Course" reflects these classic melodic metal clichés with a lot of technical execution during solos (keyboard and guitar), the voice of the seasoned Boals (Malmsteen), and great, almost obsessive, attention to choirs. However, I must admit that there are ways and ways to revisit the past, and the album I have on hand is flawlessly packaged with a sumptuous sound production and compositions capable of exciting me. Perhaps what I appreciated the most is the little inclination of our guys towards uncontrollable speed, replaced by many mid tempos. Tracks built on the solid and predictable tracks of a melodic crescendo where great space is given to backing vocals with respectable arrangements and reflective pauses with the keyboards of leader Andersen overshadowing everything else. Here is "Collision Course": a substantial handful of minutes of engaging heavy metal with many pauses and baroque choruses meant to be sung. "The First Rock", "The Divide And Reign", and "The Clan" are episodes that do not question the professionalism of the Danes, but all the tracks are linked together and should be listened to in sequence. An endeavor that is anything but impossible given the goodness of the product as a whole and the alternation between the stick (heavy riffs) and carrot (progressive metal nuances) in the tracklist.  

The not excessive length of the CD is a demonstration of intelligence on the part of the group for a work that does not aim to amaze or innovate, but to elicit some nostalgic and heartfelt applause from those who love this type of music. I'm sure that "Collision Course" I will listen to it again from time to time; especially when I want to have a background of unquestionable class metal, on which to let myself go.

In a phrase: all beautiful and perfect in form, but a bit cold. And said by me...