Band : Grave Digger
Album title : Ballads Of A Hangman
Label : Napalm Records
Distributor : Hard Life Promotion - Suburban
Release date : 09/01/2009
Release : CD

Well, there you have it: you’re reading the first review on Concrete Web of a 2009 released album!
I don’t really need to go into the history of this already legendary German Heavy Metal act, now do I? For a quick overview of their career, you might take a peek at the review I made of their previous album Liberty Or Death (posted 10/01/2007 and issued on Spannish label Locomotive). As you know they were signed to a worldwide deal with Austrian label Napalm (which is closer to home anyway), which already issued the Pray EP not so long ago (review done by yours truly). Another change came in October of last year with the addition of second guitarist Thilo Hermann to the band’s line-up.

The album in itself holds little surprises, the band’s musical make made up years ago! Like on the last couple of studio albums from the band, the lyrical themes of the new album are again conceptual, and although going on the album’s title you might expect the music to be concentrated on ballads, the truth is far from it! Indeed, frontman Chris Boltendahl is not ready to divert from a formula which works so good for him! Sure, the aforementioned “Pray” (which happens to be the album closing track)has some balladesque features, and so does “Lonely The Innocence Dies”,which features Benediction’s Veronica Freedman for an astounding guest duet (I simply admíre that woman’s vocal capacity, I do, and I’m quite capable to buy any band’s album providing they contain even only a short guest appearance of Veronica’s)…and there’s some acoustic guitar used in the opening passage of “Funeral For A Fallen Angel”…but all three of these songs still are pretty heavy overall!

Writing this during a short holliday, I’ve regrettably had no more time to look up more info than necessary to start up this review (as mentioned a couple of times before, I have no Internet connnection at home), so I’m not sure what music off the album can be found out on the information highway. Try the band’s MySpace page…and you’ll probably find a posting of the album (usually with 30-second samples of all songs) at Amazon.com pretty soon! As for my personal appreciation of the album…the fact that Miss Freedman has a guest role on it sure pushes its rating somewhat…but let’s not exagerate anyway (I mean, it’s definitely an album I wànt in my collection, but I won’t go as far as to put it into my year-lists!!!).

90/100

Tony.