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Grave Digger - Excalibur review




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Reviewer:
9.5

264 users:
8.49
Band: Grave Digger
Album: Excalibur
Release date: September 1999


01. The Secrets Of Merlin
02. Pendragon
03. Excalibur
04. The Round Table (Forever)
05. Morgane Le Fay
06. The Spell
07. Tristan's Fate
08. Lancelot
09. Mordred's Songs
10. The Final War
11. Emerald Eyes
12. Avalon
13. Parcival [track, limited edition bonus]

Excalibur, last album of the middle ages trilogy, tells the story and legends among 'King Arthur and The Knights Of The Round Table'. Those myths are formed again under raw lyrics and powerful driving sound that Grave Digger are famous for as well as majestic keyboard parts that sound like medieval music of celtic and british origin from the time the legends take place.

Excalibur is in my opinion the most majestic and epic project of all in Grave Digger's discography before 2000/01. I came to this conclusion because looking back you can see different stages of the band forming and re-forming in sound, bandstructures and quality. Arriving in the middle of the 90's the era of concept albums begins with Tunes Of War, but for the first
time, that is two years later you can find a continuing line in the style of the production, lyrics, sound etc. reaching it's climax in 1999 with this album. An overall pleasantly presented atmosphere, which is dark and thick
as the fogs of Avalon themselves. The focus is much more on melodies, not making Grave Digger sound like other german bands from the genre of power metal, but you will have to make that experience on your own.
In each song characters or storylines of the mentioned legends are presented, if you don't know the topic there is a brief explanation under each song title introducing you to the meaning of the song telling extracts from the story. To recommend some of the most significant songs of the album I'd say my favourites range among 'The Round Table', 'Morgane Le Fay', 'The Spell', 'Tristan's Fate' and 'Mordred's Song'. But these do not stand too far from the rest of the songs under which I couldn't find really weaker one or any major flaws.
Finally a word about the cover artwork, on the front page the reaper is depicted picking up the sword Excalibur, a Grave Digger interpretation of King Arthur pulling out the sword out of the stone. On The back cover you will find an interesting scene of the song 'The Round Table', where the band members (which call themselves by the names of some of the famous knights, solely for this album) sit around the round table with swords pointing to its center and the reaper is King Arthur in golden armor with the sign of pendragon engraved on the chest.
9.5 points for this almost perfected concept album

Written by Pierre Tombale | 05.07.2004




Comments

Comments: 2   Visited by: 43 users
10.04.2012 - 12:30
Rating: 9
Infernal Eternal

Awesome album.
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16.03.2018 - 22:30
Bad English
Tage Westerlund
I like keyboards but I hate their keyboardist and his outfit image masked thing, it pisses me off!
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I better die, because I never will learn speek english, so I choose dieing
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