EDGUY – Monuments DIGIBOOK – 2CD+1DVD

Descripción

HUGE DISCLAIMER!!! The 5-star rating of this review is FOR THE NEW TRACKS ONLY, as I simply could not find it in my heart to take away stars for something that I will explain later in this review.

Here we are, new Edguy material – five brand new tracks that are, simply put, SUPERB. I would classify every one of these five new songs as some of the absolute best material that Edguy has written, recorded, and released in many, many years – probably dating back to “Rocket Ride” (2006) or even “Hellfire Club” (2004). I seriously have not heard this many great Edguy tunes, one after another, since then. They all range from fast-ish bombastic melodic heavy metal to high-speed “classic Edguy” power metal, and everything in between. The guitar work is incredible, the solos are sweet and not cut short, which is greatly appreciated. Tobias’ voice sounds super-powerful in every track, the songs are all catchy, addictive, and just overall very well written. I would even take a great risk of being cursed by fellow old-school Edguy-fans by saying this: if you take these five new tracks and add the four best songs from the previous album “Space Police” (Sabre & Torch, Defenders of the Crown, The Realms of Baba Yaga, and Shadow Eaters”), you will have an album that is close to being the BEST Edguy album in their catalogue. This gives me a lot of hope for the future of Edguy’s music because I feel that the band not only “still got it”, but really has the full capability to fire on all cylinders and write killer material.

Now, let’s talk about something else here. I was so close to literally giving “Monuments” a 3-star rating instead of five stars, but just couldn’t do it because the new tracks are so incredible. Who the HELL decided which tracks should be included in this compilation? Whoever it was should be fired immediately (I seriously doubt it’s any of the band members). For a “BEST OF” compilation, the choice of songs is not just bad, it’s disgusting. 4 tracks from “Space Police” and only 1 track from the amazing “Mandrake”? Only 1 track from the very solid “Age of the Joker”? Two of the most boring and bland tracks from the incredible “Rocket Ride”, and none of the great ones? I would say overall more than HALF of the tracks on this compilation absolutely do NOT represent the greatness of Edguy’s music throughout the years. “Monuments” could have been a masterpiece, but got screwed up by these terrible song choices. Also, the older tracks from the late-90s were supposed to be “remastered”, but to be honest, even running it through a very high-end sound system, I can’t hear any significant difference besides the obvious decibel level that was more or less normalized to be in sync with the rest of the album. Disappointment here as well.

So there you have it. A stunningly horrible choice in tracks for the “Best Of” album, but for me personally – it is thankfully overshadowed by the stellar quality of the five new songs. This should have been an EP, and that’s how I’m rating it!