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Track Listing: Robin Hood Nobody's Hero Rock Of Cashel Pandora's Box Breathe Two Out Of Seven Faces In The Darkness The Arcane Guild Fire On The Downline Behind The Gates To Midnight World Every Night Without You

Edguy has been one of the most polarizing bands in the last few years. The German band has been creating some controversy with their last couple of albums. While plenty of the old fans feel betrayed with the band's change in musical direction, many embraced the change as the band gained a lot of new fans. This led us to 2011 and their new album "Age of the Joker". If you belong to the group of fans that despised the new musical direction taken by Edguy for albums like "Rocket Ride" and "Tinnitus Sanctus", then "Age Of The Joker" will surely dissapoint you as they keep moving into that style. However, "Age of the Joker" is vastly superior to those 2 albums, and I even go further and say that it is one of the most solid albums of their career and their most diverse album ever.

With "Age of the Joker", the band continues to play the 80's-tinged metal of their last two albums, but they also added some new sounds and influences to the compositions. Opening track and first album single "Robin Hood", clocks for more than 8 minutes and follows the tradition of their longer epic tracks along the lines of Rocket Ride's "Sacrifice". It is truly a great song that includes an interlude somewhat reminiscent of Maiden's "Seventh Son of a Seventh Son". The album continues with "Nobody's Hero" and "Rock of Cashel", the first one being a heavy and fast paced tune that will surely please fans of their "Hellfire Club" era. It is on "Rock of Cashel" where the aforementioned new influences become very noticeable. This is a very progressive track and the last minutes of the song sound like they were taken from a 70's Kansas song, making it one of the album's highlights. Right next we got "Pandora's Box", a song that easily could be written by a band like Whitesnake in the 70's due to its heavy blues sound.

As the album follows, Edguy continues to deliver solid and very diverse songs, and when we reach the 8th track titled "The Arcane Guild" it becomes pretty obvious that on "Age of The Joker" they decided to leave no uncovered bases. "The Arcane Guild" is another fast paced tune filled with a Hammond-styled organ bringing us the 70's vibe again. This song features one of the best guitar solos of their whole career and perhaps it's the best song on the album. One key element on this album is Tobias Sammet's vocal delivery. It seems that finally he reached a comfortable vocal zone, making his work on "Age of the Joker" the best in his career.

"Age of the Joker" is not the album some fans hoped for. It's not a return to their power metal roots, and for the most part of it, the band continued the path of "Rocket Ride" and "Tinnitus Sanctus". The album was recorded at Peppermint Park Studios in Hannover, Germany under the watchful eye of producer Sascha Paeth and it turned out as perhaps their best sounding album ever. If you want a very diverse album where no tracks sound obviously similar, then this album is for you. If you want to listen to the same power metal song for 60 minutes, then I urge you to look somewhere else.

"Age of the Joker" is due to be released on August 26 in Europe and on September 13th in the USA. It can be preordered via Amazon or by visiting the band's label websites www.nuclearblast.de and www.nuclearblastusa.com.

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