Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Every anniversary should be looked upon as a chance to take stock, to reflect and see Time as something more than the clock with fast moving hands, especially when what you are remembering is the colossal and the personally historic, reflect, celebrate and play the music loud because for all of Time’s faults and annoying quirks, when it comes to Monuments of a life, celebration of achievement is a true passion of Time spent well.

When it comes to art, achievement is everything, Time speaks out across the first flush of the idea and demands with a stern but loving voice that for all the heartaches, all the disappointments, those to whom jealousy is hidden by the sneering and the contemptible face, the only logical response is to rejoice in the fact that for the rest of Time you will be looked upon as having achieved something extraordinary, something so very human.

For German Heavy Metal band Edguy, achievement is even more honour bound, for 25 years they have piled on the pressure on those around them and taken their music to places where some to whom are contemporary have feared to tread, they have been seen as a band to whom the genre was always powerful, demanding but also, thankfully, never fashionable, for in fashion monuments are built of the insubstantial, the flimsy and the illumination of the unreal. Edguy have seen their 25 years as being true to the cause, of the music and in the celebration album, Monuments, an album containing shockwave after shockwave of true adrenalin pulse and five riveting new songs which sit perfectly in the vein of the band’s history.

With tracks such as Spooks in the Attic, The Eternal Wayfarer, Key To My Fate, Reborn In The Waste, Defenders of the Crown, Judas of the Opera 9-2-9 and the new tracks Ravenblack and The Mountaineer all leaving their sizeable mark on the listener’s mind and conscious, the current and past line ups of the band should see this album of reflection and forward facing adulation as one of cool mystique and the still burning passion of the genre in so many hearts.

We all like to consider that we are capable of leaving some sort of monument to history in our name; for Edguy it was surely never in much doubt that their drive and determination would transform a dying creature into one that roars deeply because of them.

Ian D. Hall