Gravedigger – Ballads of a Hangman

Releasedate: 09-01-2009; Label: Nuclear Blast
By: Elvira Visser

Grave Digger is one of those bands that has been around for quite some time, as their beginnings date back to 1980. In 1984 they released their first album “Heavy Metal Breakdown”. After releasing more albums and line up changes Manni Schmidt joined the band. Manni made his appearance on the 2001 release “The Grave Digger”. The inspiration from that album came from the works of American poet Edgar Allen Poe. Shortly after they released their first live album which is called “Tunes of Wacken”. In October 2005 the band could celebrate its twenty fifth anniversary and for that occasion they released a DVD of their “Last Supper Tour”. In 2007 the band singed with Napalm Records and Thilo Hermann (ex Running Wild) joined the Grave Digger family and became second guitarist.

The long running German metallers from Grave Digger have seemed to use the dark side of life as inspiration for their new album “Ballads of a Hangman”. While they were previously inspired by Edgar Allen Poe and King Arthur. I have to say I had never listened to Grave Digger before but the album is a fairly good one, but I think you can expect that from a band that has been around for almost thirty years. The band plays some genuine old-school metal with nice guitar riffs and of course a double bass. What I notice is that some of their tracks are pretty catchy, the melody line from the guitars or the vocal line. There will stick something to your mind for sure. For the track “Lonely the Innocence Dies” they worked together with Veronica Freeman of Benedictum, which turned out in one of tracks that stand out. Other favourites are “Ballad of a Hangman” and “Stormrider”.

Links:
Grave Digger MySpace
Grave Digger Official