eclipsed No. 169 / 4-2015

STEVE HACKETT - Die Stunde des Wolfs

Lange Steve Hackett has held up the flag of progressive rock of the seventies with his releases, to finally celebrate this high phase in his own cause once again with "Genesis Revisited" and at the same time reap the deserved harvest of his steadfastness. For this and above all to the new album, the concept album "Wolflight", the smart Brit is our question and answer.

TOTO - contract is contract

With their new studio album "Toto XIV", the first for nine years, Toto want to continue their great deeds in the eighties. And on paper the chances are not bad, after all there are three founding members in the current line-up as well as singer Joseph Williams, who once refined the albums "Fahrenheit" and "The Seventh One". Nevertheless, the US band doesn't remain in the past with their sound, rather they have delivered a multi-layered work that easily stands up to comparison with younger groups. But it could have been her last record.

ARENA - Bombastisches Jubiläum

When they founded in 1995, Progressive Rock was slowly on the rise again and was no longer dismissed as obscene. In the meantime, the English formation Arena looks back on a twenty-year history. The bombastrockers celebrate this with a new album. The second with singer Paul Manzi. Looking back on their own career, the Arena bosses Clive Nolan and Mick Pointer also ponder the unsteady line-up of their band.

VAN DER GRAAF GENERATOR - Langer Atem

Van der Graaf Generator don't want to bore their audience and especially themselves. That's why the last tour of the British progunicates came up with a program the band had never presented before - peppered with the most elaborate rock epics of their career. This spectacular approach is documented on her latest live album "Merlin Atmos: Live Performances 2013".

NIGHTWISH - Bandevolution: The Next Chapter

Four years after "Imaginaerum", Nightwish opens a new chapter in their highly successful career with "Endless Forms Most Beautiful" inspired by Charles Darwin. Maybe it's even the beginning of a new era: The Dutch Floor Jansen, who could already be heard on the impressive live DVD "Showtime, Storytime", is now refining the eighth studio album of the Finnish bombast specialists as a permanent band member with her very own singing style.

EUROPE - The Swedish Crown

This is what every band secretly dreams of: to add quality to every new album. The Swedish Europeans - apart from a small drop-out shortly after the reunion - have taken exactly this direction: further upwards. Europes frontman Joey Tempest takes our congratulations to the tenth album "War Of Kings" calmly and sees still air upwards.

RYLEY WALKER - Melting Pot Chicago

It doesn't happen that often that you insert a CD and leave everything you're busy with lying around. Ryley Walker's "Primrose Green" is a candidate for such a loss of control, because such an album has not existed for a long time. It builds from old virtues of free improvisation a completely new variant of folk. But the young singer-songwriter from Chicago also has both feet on the ground in very different traditions.

All you need is L.O.V.E. - Ex-Panikorchester guitarist PAUL VINCENT is on the road as a messenger of love

Paul Vincent is a German rock rock. Active since the sixties, he has moved from early involvement in beat bands (Park Lane) and psychedelic bands (Missus Beastly) to professional work as a studio musician. Through contacts to Keith Forsey, Klaus Doldinger and Olaf Kübler, he was quickly integrated into the music scenes of Munich and Hamburg and was a member of Udo Lindenberg's Panic Orchestra from 1975 to 1980. After that he played Meat Loaf's "Bad Attitude" and Freddie Mercury's "Mr. Bad Guy". From the wool Kriwanek Band, to which he belonged for years, Vincent Rocks developed after Kriwanek's death in 2003. Paul Vincent has now presented the four CD box "L.O.V.E." under his own name.

MICHAEL SCHENKER'S TEMPLE OF ROCK have a mission to accomplish

"The band can soon stand on their own two feet," Michael Schenker muses. Temple Of Rock is not only the name of his group, it was also the name of the album with which the 60-year-old guitarist opened a new chapter in 2011. A permanent band with singer Doogie White, guitarist/keyboarder Wayne Findlay and the former Scorpions rhythm team, drummer Herman Rarebell and bassist Francis Buchholz, has crystallized out of this. The main singer of the debut, Michael Voss (MadMax), holds the reins as producer. The third studio work "Spirit On A Mission", like its predecessor "Bride The Gap" (2013), was written in Münster, Westphalia.

THE GENTLE STORM - Into the Golden Age

Arjen Lucassen is jittery. Highly nervous. It is the beginning of February, and the slag from the Dutch town of Oudenbosch is currently preparing for some acoustic concerts that will soon take him across Europe together with singer Anneke van Giersbergen. Over eight years have passed since his last gigs with Stream Of Passion, and those who know Lucassen know how unpleasant, almost painful such undertakings are for him. And so it is hardly surprising that the 54-year-old is not part of the recently started tour of the new band The Gentle Storm, put together around front woman Anneke van Giersbergen. Also the performance at the "Night Of The Prog"-Festival will take place without Lucassen.