Album review: ROYAL HUNT – 20th Anniversary: Special Edition

Frontiers[Release date 23.11.22]

Denmark – home of Hans Christian Andersen, Lego, those rather nice pastries, motor-mouth Lars Ulrich and of course…Royal Hunt.

The title says it all really – this is a celebration of the last 20 years of Royal Hunt and what a mammoth package Frontiers have put together.

First you get a whopping 3 CD’s worth of material including a new track, three live tracks, three reworked acoustic numbers and five hard to find EP/re-issue bonus tracks…and then on top of this you get a DVD of promo clips and an interview as well (not with my copy unfortunately). Quite a package…

The man behind Royal Hunt and its music is keyboard maestro Andre Andersen who formed the band back in 1989 and is the only continuous member through the years. Vocalists have changed through the years starting with Henrik Brockmann and followed by DC Cooper, John West and Mark Boals. DC Cooper has been back on board since there 2011 album “Show Me How to Live”.

The tracks are presented in chronological order which is no bad thing as it shows the band developing through the years. All albums are represented but only live versions of tracks from “The Mission” and “Eyewitness”.

Royal Hunt’s sound is a complete mixture of melodic, progressive and over the top symphonic bombast but they pull it off.

Excellent retrospective of Royal Hunt to date – first 2 CD’s are excellent, third CD starts well enough with the new song “Save Me” and the acoustic renditions are a showcase for DC Cooper’s wonderful vocals but then we have the final five EP/album bonus tracks which is where, unfortunately, the quality drops off…if they weren’t good enough to go on the original album then….

Well worth a spin… ****

Review by Phil Berisford

Featured Artist: JOSH TAERK

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Power Plays w/c 11 November 2024

ARCANE MOON Hello Sun (indie)
S8NT ELEKTRIC XTC (Long Branch Records)
ARCANA KINGS Here We Go (Curtain Call Records)
KLOGR face The Unknown (Zeta Factory)
BEYOND UNBROKEN Dance With The Dead (FiXT)
REVENGIN Decadent Feeling (Wormholedeath)

Featured Albums w/c 11 November 2024

09:00-12:00 The Best of 2003-2023 (Melodic Rock)
12:00-13:00 The Best of 2003-2023 (Melodic Hard Rock)
14:00-16:00 The Best of 2003-2023 (Singer Songwriter)