Gamma Ray - Sigh No More review
| Band: | Gamma Ray |
| Album: | Sigh No More |
| Style: | Power metal |
| Release date: | September 21, 1991 |
| A review by: | wrathchild |
01. Changes
02. Rich & Famous
03. As Time Goes By
04. (We Won't) Stop The War
05. Father And Son
06. One With The World
07. Start Running
08. Countdown
09. Dream Healer
10. The Spirit
11. Sail On [live] [Japanese bonus]
12. Heroes [2002 Digipack bonus]
13. Dream Healer [Pre-production version] [2002 Digipack bonus]
14. Who Do You Think You Are? [2002 Digipack bonus]
Sigh No More is the second release of Gamma Ray, after their debut Heading For Tomorrow, and with its weird cover, it is also a weird album. The line-up is once again different, introducing Uli Kusch on drums, with still Uwe Wessel on bass, Dirk Schlachter appears playing the guitar, while the duet Kai/Ralf is at its best.
After a slightly atmospherical introduction, "Changes" opens the album and delivers a good example of the sound of the whole release: it's heavy metal, not power metal.
The next three songs also add a slight hard rock touch (in my opinion) that makes it very special and easy to listen to.
"Father & Son" is more emotional, a heavy rock ballad, really nice, with some interesting acoustic parts.
Then the most known track of the album: "One With The World", the closest to power metal in this album, considering the riffs, the lyrics, the rhythm, it also has a good drum intro/outro.
Next is the speedy/rocky, with very catchy riffs & chorus, "Start Running": when I listen to it, I actually start banging! Good solos, as in the whole album.
"Countdown" is quite of the same, with a rocking main riff and a talk-box solo (played by producer Tommy Newton).
"Dream Healer" is the longest track, the loudest (they're tuned down), also close to power metal, sometimes very slow or very fast, instrumental and lyric-based, one of the best songs by Gamma Ray in my opinion, a song a la "Heading For Tomorrow".
Final track is the pleasant and lively "The Spirit" melting acoustic & electric tunes.
The general sound of this album respects the compositions; it's clean, not so loud and heavy, far from their latest albums. It's a very good album although some don't find it to be so good, because they prefer Gamma Ray to be one of power metal's absolute reference band, and so tend to deny this one...but it's far from being a wrong or bad album, and I think this is the best album with Ralf singing, from Gamma Ray's former period.
Comments
Comments: 4
Visited by: 72 users
| iaberis Advice Troll Posts: 1698  |
To me they do sound power here. Their sound indeed is not like their latest albums, but it has the same rythm and almost the same power sound. It's less power of course than No World Order, but this doesn't mean it's not good. Sometimes, when I've set my computer to play random songs, I do confuse them with Judas Priest. Especially in the last song (The Spirit) they sound pretty much like them... Maybe this was the time that the band tried to establish thier sound and hadn't decide yet, how their music would sound.... But anwyay, it's an interesting album
---- Bitch! Please
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| Baz Anderson Staff Posts: 13254  |
this is one of my least favorite Gamma Ray albums - but i still do like it a lot i prefer 'Heading For Tomorrow' to this album i always like having a little listen to Gamma Ray when they were playing more traditional kind of heavy metal then power metal i think their first predominantly power metal album was 'Insanity & Genius' i would give the album about the same rating
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| Lord_Regnier Posts: 1469  |
"Sigh No More" is my second least favorite Gamma Ray album, after "Insanity And Genius", which is the only GR album I dislike. IAG has some good songs but I always hated production on this album. It's hard to describe, but there's something in the sound that makes me cringe. "Heading For Tomorrow" is definitely the best album with Scheepers on vocals. But I admit I never liked Scheepers and think it would have been much better if Kai Hansen made the vocals right from the start. I never bothered to check Primal Fear (only heard a few songs here and there) because I don't like Scheepers.
---- "Why would we fear death, when life is so much more frightening?"
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| Bad English Tage Westerlund Posts: 62002  |
This album is catastrophe, but as it happened in old days 90's when metal was ''real'' I say time and age conpecate catastrophic level to less as it would be today
---- I stand whit Ukraine and Israel. They have right to defend own citizens. Stormtroopers of Death - "Speak English or Die"  I better die, because I never will learn speek english, so I choose dieing
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