The Music Safari first spotted the Danish prog rock band Royal Hunt a while back, and listened to their 2011 release Show Me How to Live which was the 11th studio album from the band I enjoyed the album and have been looking forward to the release of their new album A Life to Die For, which was released on December 3rd! Since then the album has been on the iPhone and been listening to several times!! If you don’t know…..
ROYAL HUNT is a progressive metal band in the style of DREAM THEATER : symphonic heavy-metal with strong classic influences. The band is led by Danish classic oriented keyboard player André Andersen. Many influences from bands like DEEP PURPLE, ELP, RAINBOW Read More
All of the tracks on the album stand on their own and the music in each one, like the above says, switches seamlessly from very symphonic to the flat-out dynamic guitar work of the latest addition to the band Jonas Larsen ! Throughout the album the vocals of DC Cooper are strong. On the first listen “A Bullet’s Tale” was my favorite because of the guitar. But the more I listen to the album, I find myself saying, I like that one or that one was really good, so I guess I’ll just say I like all seven tracks on the album!!
The band now calls Copenhagen home but the countries of origin reflected the world-wide appeal of prog rock only two members are homegrown the other members are from Russia, the US, and Sweden. Here’s the current line-up of the band….
From their website….
Andre Andersen was born on December 16th in Moscow, Russia. He studied piano since he was 5. He is a mix of Danish and Georgian Royal blood and is a musical genius who can virtually play any instrument, compose, write lyrics and produce all at the same time…..
DC COOPER – a native of Pennsylvania, born in the Appalachian Mountain, DC did not know that someday he would find himself traveling the world and performing top quality, vocal oriented music. DC’s formative years in the music business saw him playing with several local area bands in his current hometown of Pittsburgh, PA……
Allan Sorensen was born on 24th of April in Copenhagen, Denmark. Kickstarted by his parents at the age of 4, Allan got his first drum-kit as a present. In the beginning he was influenced by the Danish rock and pop artists, but soon after he discovered the world of metal from bands like; AC/DC, Kiss, Saxon, Dio etc…
Andreas Passmark was born in Linkoping, Sweden on February 17th. His interest in music started early as he began to play cello at the age of 7 and – already after a couple years – turned to his uncle’s electric guitar and started to play along with his favourite albums.
As his interest in rock music grew stronger, Andreas started his first band with a few school friends and things began to progress a bit more rapidly… local gigs and a few studio sessions followed…..Jonas Larsen – is the latest addition to the ROYAL HUNT family. He rised to the surface of the music world in Denmark by winning the “Copenhagen Guitar Battle” competition two years in a row, 2008 and 2009. Since then he worked as a session musician in various studios and played with the cover band Highway Jam, where he was discovered by Andre…. Read the Complete Biographies here
So check them either of the albums, hell check out all 12 of them!! But for now let’s listen to the title and closing track of the album “A Life to Die For”