Metal Army America caught up with heavy metal legend KAI HANSEN to talk about his new project, UNISONIC. The group reunites Hansen with his former HELLOWEEN band mate/singer MICHAEL KISKE for the first time in twenty-five years as a writing partner. Their debut, self-titled album is out in America after being released this spring in Europe and Japan and is a must have for fans of old-school heavy metal, power metal and rock. KAI was very gracious with his time and covered a lot of ground with us, so it was a really fun interview.
(Special thanks to KAI HANSEN, Earsplit PR and Eagle Rock Entertainment)
AVANTASIA The Wicked Symphony and Angel Of Babylon (Nuclear Blast)
For those of you that don’t know these albums are the continuation of the Scarecrow Saga that was started back in 2008 with the release of The Scarecrow. Much like TOBIAS SAMMET’s other albums outside of EDGUY, these two are chalked full of special guests. Including KLAUSE MEINE from SCORPIONS, RIPPER OWENS of JUDAS PRIEST/ICED EARTH/YNGWIE MALMSTEEN/BEYOND FEAR/CHARRED WALLS OF THE DAMNED, BRUCE KULICK from KISS, JON OLIVA from SAVATAGE, MICHAEL KISKE from HELLOWEEN, RUSSELL ALLEN from SYMPHONY X, ERIC SINGER from KISS, and JORN LANDE from MASTERPLAN among others.
I’m honestly not the biggest power metal fan in the world, as I lost my desire to listen to this sub-genre during the early to mid 90s. Honestly HELLOWEEN was the only power metal band I can profess to really like, and I honestly haven’t followed them since the Time Of The Oath came out. Unfortunately I feel that EDGUY, HAMMERSFALL, and the rest of the lot really haven’t evolved much if any since the aforementioned HELLOWEEN released the first two Keeper Of The Seven Keysalbums. HELLOWEEN themselves have had a tremendous time trying to follow them up. Sometimes they’ve succeeded in coming close, but on other occasions they’ve fallen way short (seriously an unplugged album?).
In any event, I went into this album seeing if TOBIAS was brining something new to the table. I really enjoyed the track he did with ERIC SINGER on BRUCE KULICK’s BK3 album, so I figured, why not, let’s give the albums a shot. The Wicked Symphony is technically the first disc of the boxed set that is being sold. You can also buy the discs separately. The title track starts the album out, and I’m immediately digging it. The second song “Wastelands” come in, and to my surprise MICHAEL KISKE is singing, and this is easily the best power metal song I’ve heard not only him sing, but a band play since the KEEPERS albums mentioned above. “Scales of Justice” kicks in and it has TIM “RIPPER” OWENS signature sound all over it, and TOBIAS sounding like GRAHAM BONNET in a few spots. The first single is up next, it is called “Dying For An Angel”, it features KLAUSE MEINE, and sounds much better than the video mix which sounds way too polished, and pop sounding for my likings. At this point I’m wondering why I didn’t enjoy The Scarecrow when it came out, and I started to remember why. The first four tracks are all good to great, but after that “Crestfallen” is the only really good song on the album, everything else is ok, but pretty generic. (more…)
