By: Anders

Posted: Nov 13, 2005

The Swedish melodic hard rock/heavy metal band fronted by the huge voice Nils Patrik Johansson is soon ready with their 3rd full length album "Astralism", though to make the wait seem shorter, they have released this mini album, to satisfy the hungry fans. The album contains 1 new track, 1 unreleased track and 3 tracks from Japanese releases of the band's earlier albums, and a video for the great 'Time To Rock'.

The new track 'Raiders Of The Ark', for sure makes my mouth-water run, if that track is the standard of the new album, we have another treat in wait. The trademark old sounding hard rock/heavy metal style, that Astral Doors already have made theirs. A great flair for the song and the melody therein, and the vocals from Johansson on the top.

The unreleased track is entitled 'Easy Rider' and is a nice sing along rocker, straight ahead and it is catching fairly quick on, good riffing and good play all around the line, and the great organ is adding atmosphere en masse.

The 3 Japanese bonus track are 'Far Beyond The Astral Doors', 'Another Day In Hell' and 'Moonstruck Woman', the latter being my favorite on this album. Good trucker rock, nice organ, a good chorus and good melodic to psychedelic guitar riffs, with the organ adding the last piece of the 70ties atmosphere. The vocals are again top notch. The first mentioned track is also killer, atmospheric and has the spacey atmosphere, which makes it interesting and hanging on.

The video for the very DIO-isque 'Time To Rock' is recorded while the band is on stage and around Europe touring, nice to see their energetic performance on stage and beer drinking antics backstage, though it would have been great to hear an actual live sound, than the studio edit, though that of course is natural, when thinking of it being an official video. Well, we might someday see an Astral Doors live release, they seems good on the stage and quite loose and glad for beer behind it.

This is a must have release for Astral Doors fans, killer music once again, and the preview of the new album is killer, and really makes one drool. The music is delivered passionate and the vocals are beyond this world. The production from Peter Tägtgren is great and fitting as well, yeah it all kicks ass, so there's no excuse for fans of the band not getting this teaser.

Rating: 7/10

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