Grave Digger - The Grave Digger

dill_the_devil

OneMetal.com Music Editor
Grave Digger - The Grave Digger
Nuclear Blast - 2001
By Philip Whitehouse

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Still growing old disgracefully, Teutonic metallers Grave Digger continue their trend of themed albums with this platter, whose songs all relate to 19th century misery-merchant Edgar Allen Poe's scribblings.

The album starts in typically Grave Digger-esque fashion - a simple piano melody opens the album, before Manni Schmidt quickly dispense with all notions of subtlely and launches into a wallpaper-stripping guitar riff. Soon the rest of the band follows suit, with Chris Boltendahl's trademark gravel-gargling opera-singer style vocals rising majestically above it all. Never have the words 'I am the son of evil' been sung more convincingly...

The album is, as I said, typical Grave Digger. A bunch of fast songs, a cloying power-ballad ('Silence'), one that starts off sounding like a cloying power-ballad but turns into a sinister, plodding chugalong ('The House'), all covered with jaw-dropping technical proficiency, but with a regrettable lack of progression.

Grave Digger are never short of a damned good retro-metal anthem, but then again, they never have been. I'm not suggesting that they retire from recording altogether and spend the next few years touring the pub scene knocking out the favourites, but maybe it's time to add something new to the Grave Digger formula, before things start to stagnate...

In their defence, though, 'Spirits of the Dead' is an incredible song with some truly awe-inspiring riffage, and the album is worth owning for that song alone... But the fact still remains that after nearly twenty years of existence, we've already seen every trick Grave Digger know - maybe it's time for them to learn some new ones.

7/10