Hellfire Club is the beginning of Edguy’s turn from the PowerMetal realm to a more hard rock/pop metal sound. Upon hearing the album’s opening song you would not believe this, but please, continue listening…
Hellfire Club is not a bad album, it is, actually, a very consistant album.
Tobias Sammat, vocals and chief songwriter of the band had just come from writing and recording three PowerMetal albums back to back: 2001’s Edguy: Mandrake and his side project Avantasia: The Metal Opera and 2002’s Avantasia: The Metal Opera Part II. Plus, before all this, the band re-recorded their first album (demo) Savage Poetry (retitled: The Savage Poetry) in 2000 and did summer festival shows in support of it.
Hellfire Club was released in 2004 and, if you haven’t guessed already, was written right after Tobias’s four albums in three years, PowerMetal extravaganza or purging, if you will. The direction could not be anything but different from what everyone expected Edguy to do.
Although not too different, there was still the double bass kicking and mini-epic songs on the album, many of the shorter duration songs were metal in sound yet contained a more accessible, sometimes pop-metal tinged sound. The lyrics, however, became more terse which clashed nicely with the 80’s metal sound. When they lyrics weren’t to-the-point they were humor laden raunch – Another homage to the 1980’s metal sound. I should mention the ballad, Forever, straight out sappy lyrics; 80’s all the way.
Track Listing:
01: Mysteria
02: The Piper Never Dies
03: We Don’t Need A Hero
04: Down To The Devil
05: King Of Fools
06: Forever
07: Under The Moon
08: Lavatory Love Machine
09: Rise Of The Morning Glory
10: Lucifer In Love
11: Navigator
12: The Spirit Will Remain
13: Children Of Steel
14: Mysteria (w/ Mille Pettrozza from Kreator)
Love ’em or hate ’em, Edguy is a band that knows how to put a song together and can play many different styles of music. They do not change with what is popular at the moment. They do not bow down before critics and write their music with hopes their fans will like it, if the fans do not – six in one hand, half-a-dozen in the other.
Poetry, Melodies & Metal 