Gamma Ray: Land of the Free (1995)

A few weeks back I reviewed a tribute album to German power metal masters Gamma Ray which featured a number of up and coming groups from the genres of heavy, doom and power metal.  I was familiar with Gamma Ray, but had only checked out one album by the band previously.  Most of that was due to the difficulty in tracking down the older, more highly regarded albums.  Even the one I had (Somewhere Out in Space) was expensive.  But I was blown away by one song in particular off of that tribute album and I decided to see if I could track down the album it appeared on.  This is that album.

The song I was referring to is "Rebellion in Dreamland" and it is the first song on this album.  The cover was pretty damn good, but the original is so much better.  Seriously, this is a power metal masterpiece.  It is extremely dynamic, going through a number of musical sections, but it remains at an extremely high quality throughout.  It is one of the catchier power metal songs I have ever heard, and that is truly saying something.  This song is absolutely terrific.  It is very hard to top.

Unfortunately Gamma Ray is never able to quite match the bar they set on the opening track, but that does not mean that this album is a letdown, far from it.  In fact, this is probably one of the finest examples of a power metal album out there.  There are a number of great songs on the rest of the album, including "Man on a Mission", the title track, "Abyss of the Void" and "Salvation's Calling".  The music is generally fast-paced power metal that clearly resembles the type of music Kai Hansen was writing with his previous band Helloween.  And if this album sounds a lot like Helloween's Walls of Jericho, well there is a reason for that.  Hansen sings on this album, just as he did on Helloween's aforementioned debut.  So we have Hansen writing the music and singing.

There are very few weak moments on the entire album.  I will point out that "Fairytale" is so short as to be mostly irrelevant and "Farewell" tries hard to be Gamma Ray's version of Blind Guardian's "Bard's Song", but mostly fails.  And finally "Time to Break Free", which features Helloween's Michael Kiske, ironically the singer who replaced Hansen in Helloween, comes across a little clumsy.

This album is an absolutely essential power metal album, and should be held in the same esteem as albums like Walls of Jericho, both Keeper of the Seven Keys albums and Tales from the Twilight World.  It is an absolutely incredible album from start to finish, even if it never really comes close to matching "Rebellion in Dreamland".