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GRAVE DIGGER ‘The Last Supper’ Nuclear Blast (2005)
For the last twenty years, the members of the Heavy Metal outfit Grave Digger have been proudly proclaiming their Teutonic Metal inheritance, and honouring their influence and never-ending love and admiration for classic bands like Judas Priest and Accept, with every new album.
If you want to know more of the rich and very interesting history of this band, I suggest you invest in 'Grave Digger – die definitive Biografie', the band’s biography which was quite recently released by Chris Boltendahl. That of course, only if you have a good knowledge of the German language – otherwise you will have to wait, like I will, for the English version to be published.
What I want to share with you, though, are my personal thoughts regarding the band’s eleventh studio release 'The Last Supper' - an album that will soon be available in every CD store around the globe. I have been a fan of this band long enough to know what I should expect from them. I am pretty sure that such a statement on my part must sound pretty negative for any other band, but not for Grave Digger.
I know for a fact that since the release of 'Heavy Metal Breakdown' back in 1984, Chris Boltendahl’s vision was to form a band with which he could play the music that he loved the most – classic Heavy Metal, and by God has he achieved this goal. I have heard many people in the past accusing both them and Running Wild of what they chose to describe as lack of inspiration - something that most of the people that love this band (myself included), will prefer to describe as ‘devotion’.
'The Last Supper' is the third studio release with the same line up, and one more concept album which, I am willing to bet, was influenced by Mel Gibson’s controversial movie 'The Passion of Christ'. Even though I totally respect both Jens Becker (bass, ex-Running Wild) and Manni Schmidt (guitars, ex-Rage) for what they have achieved with their previous bands, I found their contribution to the last two Grave Digger albums, 'The Grave Digger' (2001) & 'Rheingold' (2003), to be less than satisfactory.
Both these albums lacked passion, something that’s more visible now that this new album is released. No, I do not believe that the glorious days of 'Heart Of Darkness' (1995) and 'Tunes Of War' (1996) have been revived, but it would be fair to say that not only has 'The Last Supper' borrowed many elements from both these releases, but that it’s also comparable with the band’s 1999 release 'Excalibur'.
There is really no need for me to describe the lyrical context of this album - I prefer to simply mention that the story starts the night that Jesus gathered his disciples for what is known as the Last Supper. What I found really amazing, and in retrospect brilliantly inspirational, is the fact that the two songs that this release is mostly based upon, the same titled 'The Last Supper' and the album’s longest composition 'Crucified', are both powerful mid-tempo compositions.
The story that Grave Digger chose to work with in their eleventh release is a story of great passion and pain, feelings that have been so accurately delivered in 'Crucified' that enables me to claim that this is one of the best compositions ever recorded by this great band. Other songs that do manage to stand out are 'Desert Rose' and 'Grave in the no Man’s Land', with the latter based on a similar riff to that of Metallica’s 'Enter Sandman'.
That’s it then - another Grave Digger album that will probably not classify them as the best Heavy Metal band in the world, but will satisfy their fans world-wide by proving that some values can stand the test of time.
Review by John Stefanis
***½
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