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Artist: Eden's Curse |
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One of the most anticipated debut releases to get the tongues wagging on the melodic rock forums over the past few months is the Eden’s Curse self titled album due for release on the 27th of August on Germany’s AFM Records. Eden’s Curse is the brainchild of Paul Logue of Cry Havoc fame and Michael Eden, together with Thorsten Koehne on guitars, Pete Newdeck on drums and completing the line-up Ferdy Doernberg on keyboards and along with a few friends namely Carsten Lizard Schulz, Dave Readman, Doogie White and the production skills of Dennis Ward, they have put together an album worthy of all their united talents. After the intro ‘Book Of Life’ the album really gets going with ‘Judgement Day’, in an instant it’s the hooks of guitarist Koehne that really make their mark with the vocals of Eden coming a close second. This track doesn’t grab you as a think a great opener should, but it still is a good piece of Melodic Metal with the outstanding feature being the guitar work. Things continue with ‘Eyes of the World’, a track written by Schulz and Robby Boebel for Evidence One, but one that never make the final cut of their album. You can recognise the Evidence One stylings in the song with some fantastic guitars once again by Koehne, although the vocals of Eden don’t match the sheer power that Schulz brings to a song. Things are brought up a notch or two with ‘Stronger Than The Flame’, this is where Eden makes his mark vocally on this very Bonfire sounding song, with its streaming guitars and thumping rhythms, this is a typical Euro Metal track and probably should have been the opener as is puts Eden’s vocals to the forefront of the song, something that was rather lacking on the two previous tracks. Things are brought back down with the haunting melodies of ‘The Voice Inside’ which once again stamps the guitar playing of Koehne on the album, this mixed with the keyboards of Doernberg compliment each other perfectly on this ballad. The tempo is once again picked up with the excellent hard rocker ‘After The Love Is Gone’, this unification between the hard-edged guitars and the vocals of Eden are what the album had promised from the beginning and is one of the album highlights for me. Another highlight is the thumping metal sound that is found on ‘Fly Away’, which brings in more keyboards to give it that symphonic metal edge that just oozes out of every pore of the track and with Newdeck’s thumping away at the skins, this is sure to be a showstopper live. The album is really starting to take form by this point and things continue on in a positive vein with another pounding piece of Melodic Metal ‘What Are You Waiting For’, this is carried on into the title track ‘Eden’s Curse’, with another sterling job done by Koehne on guitar, who is backed all the way by Logue and Newdeck’s superb rhythm section. The band go all out on the rocker ‘Don’t Bring Me Down’, its all systems go on this one as it just rocks, that's the pure and simple of it, IT ROCKS!, even if there is just a touch of Deep Purples ‘Burn’ in there. From the first few tracks of this album I thought I was going to be disappointed by it but as things go on it gets progressively better with each of the songs get stronger and stronger and this quality continues with ‘Heaven Touch Me’, another up tempo rocker that straight out of the Dokken camp. The band really go for the Historical Metal element firstly with the intro ‘The Bruce’ which has this Scottish heart a flutter as I imagine the Saltire flying proud, this intro sets the scene for ‘Fallen King’, a real piece of pure Melodic Hard Rock. The album closes with a little surprise cover version of a band that didn’t exist Steel Dragon’s ‘We All Die Young’ from the film Rock Star is the surprise package on the album and rounds off what is all in all a very good debut release and I can't wait to see if any live dates will follow the release.
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Tracklisting:
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