PRETTY MAIDS – Pandemonium

8.5/10

PRETTY MAIDS - Pandemonium - 8.5/10

8.5/10

Summary

Frontiers
Release date: May 14, 2010

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Pretty Maids from Denmark can look back on almost three decades of solid Rock, but after their eighties’ successes it became a bit quiet about them, which is no surprise knowing that some of their dozen albums were certainly a step down from the famous Future World. But with Paul Christensen and Kenneth Hansen (better known as Ronnie Atkins and Ken Hammer), the two original founding members of the band left, they never released a bad album either.

From the start of the title track to the end of “Breathless”, the new album Pandemonium is a strong statement that Pretty Maids still hold their ground. The album consists of ten excellent Melodic Metal tracks that may well make up the album to beat for this year’s throne in that genre. The arrangements are skillfully done, the many years of experience result in some almost perfect tunes, which may only be good songs if somebody else had done it, but in the hands of these Metal veterans the hymn “I.N.V.U.”, the unusually heavy “Cielo Drive” and even the comparatively mellow single release “Little Drops Of Heaven” just turn gold. Overall five of the songs on the album would justify nothing but the highest score for Pandemonium.

Towards the end, the album loses a bit of its drive. Except for the aforementioned “Cielo Drive”, the second part of the album certainly has good songs, but those pale in comparison to the perfect beginning. It is still not bad, and if those were the highlights of the album, it would still be recommendable to check out, but the band proves that they can even be better than that and set their own records right from the start of Pandemonium.

This is an unexpectedly great return for one of the oldest Metal bands from Denmark which should be on the shopping list of every fan of melodic, yet heavy, music.

Pretty Maids

Author

Frank Jaeger

Frank was a reviewer here at Metal Express Radio, based out of Bavaria, Germany. He has worked in the games industry for more than 20 years, now on the manufacturing side, before on the publishing end. Before this, he edited and handled the layout for a city mag in northern Germany ... maybe that is why he love being part of anything published. Frank got hooked on Metal at the age of 14 when a friend introduced him to AC/DC. They were listening to The Beatles, Madness, and The Police, and he decided they should move on. Well, they did, Back in Black became Frank's first Metal album, and since Germany is reasonably close to England, they had some small New Waves Of British Heavy Metal washing up on their shores: Tygers Of Pan Tang, Samson, Gillan, Iron Maiden, Saxon, Sweet Savage, Diamond Head, etc. If he had to pick his favorite styles, Prog and Power Metal would be at the top of the list.
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