The Mission

After about 2 year a new Royal Hunt album to add the my collection. And a good one for that matter. A band that really made many different changes in their sound, but always managing in sounding like Royal Hunt, as difficult to understand as it is. To be honest with you I never thought that I would like that new album. Why ? simply because the last live performance of the band sucked so big (I'm talking award winning catastrophe) that I was sorry I didn't have a tomato to throw. And that did worries me because I really like this band. I like all past albums till their killer masterpiece Paradox that marked the ascension to near perfection of the band. Unfortunately after that perfect album D.C Cooper left the band, and frankly I miss his vocals. But John West is a very good singer too, no doubts there and he proves it once more with The Mission. The only thing that bothers me is that he sometimes sound perfect and sometimes takes some strange voice that don't fit the music, basically when he sings like DC Cooper did : he rocks, but when he experiments he can be quite bad (fortunately only on a few moments). An album full of atmosphere, a few experimental touches and that sound more progressive than everything Royal Hunt delivered before. The Mission is a concept album on the Mars subject based on a novel by Ray Bradburry (The Martian Chronicles). The album contains a lot of great and catchy melodies, with maybe a bit too much keyboards in front, but that wouldn't be Royal Hunt (and Andre Anderson) if that wasn't the case, still the overall sounding much more electronic than their previous albums. As for the guitars, they are majestic and furious, too bad they're a bit masked by the keyboards. The production is near perfect, a powerful crystal clear sound that brings perfect balance and a full entertainment feeling to the listener. I wished more album would be produced this way. Too bad the artcover don't match the quality of the production, cause put in simple words : it sucks ! A 5 minutes work on the landscape generator application Bryce (who said budget ?) ! Fans of the band will find the Royal Hunt sound back again and those liking some more electronic and prog touches should be more than happy with this new album. I prefer the old days but I can't deny that this The Mission is a good album. Except maybe for a few "too" experimental moments, I can't seem to find any weaknesses (artcover excluded). I just hope the band's live performance will improve or that they were in a really really bad day the last time I saw them. Good work, for all fan of melodic metal.