{"id":25208,"date":"2013-01-19T09:10:02","date_gmt":"2013-01-19T14:10:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hardrockhaven.net\/online\/?p=25208"},"modified":"2014-02-16T09:10:25","modified_gmt":"2014-02-16T14:10:25","slug":"royal-hunt-20th-anniversary-special-edition-cd-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hardrockhaven.net\/online\/2013\/royal-hunt-20th-anniversary-special-edition-cd-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Royal Hunt | 20th Anniversary \u2013 Special Edition<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Justin Gaines<\/span>
\n– News Editor \/ Senior Columnist —<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"RoyalTo celebrate their 20th anniversary, Danish melodic progressive metal band Royal Hunt has released a massive 4-disc retrospective titled 20th Anniversary \u2013 Special Edition<\/em>. This set features 34 songs spread across three CDs plus a DVD that includes all of the band\u2019s promotional videos. In the band\u2019s two decades, they\u2019ve gone from a relatively straightforward melodic rock\/metal band to one of the more interesting progressive metal bands around, all the while maintaining a heavily keyboard oriented sound (thanks to chief songwriter and keyboardist Andre Anderssen). Along the way the band has featured some first rate vocalists in their ranks, including John West (ex-Artension), Mark Boals (ex-Yngwie Malmsteen) and of course DC Cooper (ex-Silent Force).<\/p>\n

After last year\u2019s very disappointing Heart of the City<\/em> collection, it\u2019s great to see a Royal Hunt retrospective like this one that truly covers the band\u2019s long career. The first two CDs in this set cover the band\u2019s eleven studio albums (with the occasional live track). They treat each album equally though, which was a failing of Heart of the City<\/em> as well. For a number of Royal Hunt fans, the two original albums with DC Cooper on vocals \u2013 1995\u2019s Moving Target<\/em> and 1997\u2019s Paradox<\/em> \u2013 are the band\u2019s best albums, so it would have been nice to see them represented more heavily than some of the band\u2019s more recent output. Still, there are some gems from the John West and Mark Boals albums, and this set does a good job capturing them. It\u2019s good to hear all of these songs, especially the early Henrik Brockmann tracks, cleaned up sonically for this set. The first 4-5 Royal Hunt albums are overdue for a good remastering. <\/p>\n

20th Anniversary \u2013 Special Edition\u2019s<\/em> third CD is what most long time Royal Hunt fans are going to be interested in, since it features all of the new material. The disc leads off with \u201cSave Me,\u201d a new studio song featuring DC Cooper. Even as keyboard drenched as it is, it\u2019s got a great bluesy guitar sound and of course DC Cooper shines. There are also three new acoustic recordings of older Royal Hunt songs \u2013 \u201cOne By One,\u201d \u201cBodyguard\u201d and \u201cRestless\u201d \u2013 that are really fun additions. The disc closes out with five b-sides\/rarities that were originally only available on imports and rare EPs, which is something collectors will no doubt appreciate.<\/p>\n

All told, 20th Anniversary \u2013 Special Edition<\/em> is a pretty terrific Royal Hunt anthology. It\u2019s got enough goodies to make it a worthwhile purchase for die-hard Royal Hunt fans, and is comprehensive enough to make a great introduction to the band for newcomers.<\/p>\n

NOTE \u2013 This review is based on the digital version of 20th Anniversary \u2013 Special Edition<\/em>, so it does not cover the quality of the DVD. It\u2019s probably fine, but then again we saw what happened with the shoddy audio and video on the Future\u2019s Coming From the Past<\/em> DVD. Hopefully steps were taken to clean up the video footage.<\/p>\n

Genre: Melodic Metal, Progressive Metal Metal<\/p>\n

Track Listing:
\n1.\tFlight
\n2.\tKingdom Dark
\n3.\tStranded
\n4.\tClown in the Mirror
\n5.\tWasted Time
\n6.\tEpilogue
\n7.\tTime
\n8.\tFar Away
\n9.\t1348
\n10.\tRiver of Pain
\n11.\tTearing Down the World
\n12.\tCold City Lights
\n13.\tMessage to God
\n14.\tFollow Me
\n15.\tSurrender
\n16.\tThe Mission
\n17.\tCan\u2019t Let Go
\n18.\tPaper Blood
\n19.\tSeason\u2019s Change
\n20.\tThe First Rock
\n21.\tTears of the Sun
\n22.\tThe Well
\n23.\tShadowman
\n24.\tHard Rain\u2019s Coming
\n25.\tHalf Past Loneliness
\n26.\tSave Me (new song)
\n27.\tOne by One (acoustic, new recording)
\n28.\tBodyguard (acoustic, new recording)
\n29.\tRestless (acoustic, new recording)
\n30.\tBad Luck
\n31.\tDouble Conversion
\n32.\tU-Turn
\n33.\tSixth Sense
\n34.\tDay is Dawning<\/p>\n

Label: Frontiers Records<\/p>\n

Website: www.royalhunt.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Hardrock Haven rating: 8.5\/10<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Justin Gaines – News Editor \/ Senior Columnist — To celebrate their 20th anniversary, Danish melodic progressive metal band Royal Hunt has released a massive 4-disc retrospective titled 20th Anniversary \u2013 Special Edition. This […]<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8704],"tags":[336,374,3439,334,3064],"class_list":{"0":"post-25208","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-arcrvws2013","7":"tag-cd","8":"tag-frontiers-records","9":"tag-melodic-metal","10":"tag-review","11":"tag-royal-hunt"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hardrockhaven.net\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25208","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hardrockhaven.net\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hardrockhaven.net\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hardrockhaven.net\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hardrockhaven.net\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25208"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hardrockhaven.net\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25208\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hardrockhaven.net\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hardrockhaven.net\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hardrockhaven.net\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}