Northern Kings (includes members of Nightwish & Sonata Arctica)

[Iced Dog]

http://www.bravewords.com/news/73311

MetalFromFinland.com reports:

NORTHERN KINGS plays symphonic metal and the band contains 4 extremely well known Finnish musicians - J. Ahola (TERÄSBETONI), Marco Hietala (TAROT, NIGHTWISH), Tony Kakko (SONATA ARCTICA), J-P Leppäluoto (CHARON).

Each and every one of these musicians have gained success in Finland and around the world. They ended up using the name Northern Kings but originally they had working titles like "Killdivo" and "Helldivo".

Northern Kings will release an album on October 24th and it will contain 80's hits played in different types of metal arrangements. First single to be released on September 26th will feature TINA TURNER's 'We Don't Need Another Hero'. Some of the songs featured on the album include: 'I Just Died In Your Arms Tonight' (CUTTING CREW), 'In The Air Tonight' (PHIL COLLINS), 'Brothers In Arms' (DIRE STRAITS), 'Sledgehammer' (PETER GABRIEL) and 'Ashes To Ashes' (DAVID BOWIE).

lol...this sounds interesting...I wanna hear that Cutting Crew cover

 

[seraph7]

This sounds good. I'll have to check this out if I can. Is it Spinefarm who are releasing this. I wasn't sure from the info, sorry.

 

[Teleute]

Omg, awesome! I'll be buyin' that one for sure!

<3 Toni
<3 Marco

 

[DemonXeno]

TINA TURNER ...<.<

 

[Tramz]

This has such great stuff on it. My favorite is probably the opener, "Don't Stop Believin" with Marco singing. Broken Wings always was an 80's song i liked, so that's interesting to hear redone. Ashes to Ashes is cool mostly because Tony is singing.

Is it just me or does the guitar line on "Fallen On Hard Times" remind anyone else of Bark At The Moon? Not that such a thing is bad, by any means.

I wish they had done "I Just Died In Your Arms" a bit more uptempo. It kind of drags a bit. I definitely enjoy their cover of Sledgehammer, it's certainly one of my favorites on the album. "In The Air Tonight" Is another good one. Though it doesn't hurt that i always did enjoy the original (and there was a remake done around 1993 with a trip-hop beat behind it that was great). The vocals sound a bit forced in places, but still i dig it.

I was surprised Creep was on here, not being an 80's song. This is one of the only ones i'm not sure about. It's really hard to improve on Radiohead. This version tries to be all spooky-quirky-creepy to the max and something about it, while interesting and kind of cool, just makes me want to hear the original.

"Hello" is another high point on the album for me. Ok so sue me, i used to like the original Lionel Richie song, but they have really done such wonders with this song and really made it rock.

 

[The Stormbird]

LOL... I just commented on this over at Sonic Cathedral.

Although in theory I like the idea of taking old songs and redoing them in a different style, especially if it's done by someone with talent, I think in this case the results are just too strange. I listened to some of it on their myspace page and it seemed to me that the songs bore very little resemblance to the originals, and instead were bizarre just for the sake of being bizarre. Didn't really work for me, but then I haven't heard the whole album either.

 

[Tramz]

Well i don't really care if they are clones. In fact, i prefer it if they take some liberties. I mean take another look at "Don't Stop Believin". Holy crap is that cover awesome, but they absolutely took a few liberties. The same can be said of Sledgehammer and certainly of Hello. At first i had wished Broken Wings was sung an octave or so higher, but now i've come to like it the way it is.

But yeah it's always a mixed bag when you take some liberties when covering old songs. Some people will like what's done, others may not.

 

[kingtoad]

Well i don't really care if they are clones. In fact, i prefer it if they take some liberties. I mean take another look at "Don't Stop Believin". Holy crap is that cover awesome, but they absolutely took a few liberties. The same can be said of Sledgehammer and certainly of Hello. At first i had wished Broken Wings was sung an octave or so higher, but now i've come to like it the way it is.

But yeah it's always a mixed bag when you take some liberties when covering old songs. Some people will like what's done, others may not.

Yeah, I'm really enjoying this album. They're really awesome covers. Bringing back some good memories, and some bad.

 

[The Stormbird]

Taking liberties is fine with me, in fact I prefer it that way, up to a point. But it can get to a point where the only relation to the original song is the lyrics, and that's just the way it seemed to me from the few samples I heard. Of course, I reserve full judgment until I've heard the whole thing.

 

[The Stormbird]

And now I've heard the whole album, and I have to agree with you, Tramz, about "Don't Stop Believin" and "Hello." They did great things with both of those songs. And "Broken Wings" was also rather interesting.

But aside from those, I don't care much for anything else they did.

I also agree with you about how "I Just Died..." drags, and that's what really killed it for me. It was the same with "Rebel Yell", it just dragged with no real energy to it.

"Brothers in Arms" was ok, I suppose, but then I have no memory of what the original sounded like.

"Sledgehammer" was passable, but nothing more.

To my knowledge, I've never heard the original versions of "Ashes to Ashes" or "Fallen on Hard Times", and don't care for these new versions either.

If "Creep" is the one from Radiohead, I've never heard it. If it's the one from Stone Temple Pilots, then again I have almost no memory of it. In either case, it sounded rather boring in its present incarnation.

So for me, I'd say 3 good ones out of the bunch, and a couple of mediocres. But experimentation is a good thing; I'll give them an A for effort!

 

[will1234]

Hey!

If you wanna pick up the record in the UK I found this press release -

'Reborn - the new record from Finnish supergroup Northen Kings is released in the UK on Monday 16th June through Warner Music Entertainment. For more contact and release information go to :

http://www.noblepr.co.uk/Press_Releases/wme/northern_kings.htm

Cool, lovin the record too!

 

[seraph7]

That was interesting. Good pictures too. Yet another album I'll have to pick up.

 

[A7]

Has anyone here picked up Rethroned? So far, I've heard "Kiss from a Rose", "Take On Me", "A View to a Kill" and "Training Montage", but how's the rest of the album?

 

[RedFox742]

I really, really want to get these albums, but as far as I can tell they can't be found in the US.

 

[St Enigma]

At least CD Inzane has "Reborn" ($34.95) and "Rethroned" ($22.95) listed in their catalog.

Even when the US dollar is super weak right now (1 U$ = 0,66 euro) you will get a better deal if you order the CDs from www.recorshopx.com in Finland. "Reborn" (11.90 euro) + "Rethroned" (11.90 euro) + shipping (2.90 euro) will set you back about $40

I know from my US friends' experiences that recordshopx is very reliable and fast, their shipments arrive at US East Coast in 4-7 days, shipping to West Coast takes a day or two longer.

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