lukretion
In the late 1990s, the Royal Hunt family splintered off into many separate subprojects. Singer DC Cooper released a solo album in 1999 (though at the time he was about to be expelled from the Danish melodic prog metal band). Bass player Steen Mogensen formed Cornerstone and released the band’s debut album in 2000. Royal Hunt’s mastermind André Andersen was actually the first to follow his own muse and prepare a solo record that was released in 1998 under the title “Changing Skin”.
The album’s title is actually quite ironic, because Mr Andersen on this record certainly did not change skin at all relative to his dayjob with Royal Hunt. His solo record sounds exactly like you would expect a Royal Hunt’s album to sound. Now, that may be inevitable given how Andersen is the main songwriter for the Danish band. Yet, I somehow expect musicians who embark in solo projects to stretch out a little bit from their musical comfort zone and try new things. That was the case for both DC Cooper’s solo album and Cornerstone’s debut album, for instance. Changing Skin instead is firmly grounded in the special blend of symphonic metal, hard rock and prog/power metal that Royal Hunt have become known for.
The 6 tracks of the album are built around Andersen’s considerable keyboard skills. The music is majestic and symphonic, with a strong classical flavor in the arrangements. Andersen is also in charge of rhythmic guitar and bass on this album. However, the use of the guitars is not very different from how they are used in Royal Hunt. The riffs serve as counterpoint for the keyboard melodies, playing the role that strings would play in an orchestra. The drums (handled by Kaj Laege and Royal Hunt’s drummers Kenneth Olsen and Allan Sørensen) follow the bass/guitar dynamics and therefore also have a strong classical feel in the way they are employed on the record. The songs stay in a driving mid-tempo range, with occasional accelerations, but the overall atmosphere is majestic and epic. The song structure is not overly complex, despite the tracks’ relatively long duration (the shortest track is just above 6 minutes). There is quite a lot of repetition of verses/choruses and plenty of solos, played by Mr Andersen on his keyboard as well as by guest guitarists Bjarke Hopen, Mac Gaunaa (Narita) and Jacob Kjaer (Royal Hunt). With such a distinguished line-up, the playing is strong throughout.
The main novelty relative to a standard Royal Hunt’s release is that the vocals here are handled by Kenny Lübcke, a singer who has featured as backing vocalist on many Royal Hunt’s albums and that here gets the spotlight shone on him. His voice is smooth and velvety, closer to John West’s than DC Cooper’s, which is partly why Changing Skin sounds somewhere between Fear and The Mission. Lübcke has a distinctive metallic timbre that one can often hear in Royal Hunt’s backing vocals and that here comes to the fore even more. While the vocal performance is generally good, Lübcke lacks somewhat the charisma and expressivity of other Royal Hunt’s singers, so the overall impact on the listener is a little diminished.
While the songwriting is good enough to make this an entertaining album, we are far from the best material Andersen has written over the years. Only the title-track and the symphonic ballad “In My Arms” are really strong tracks that catch one’s attention already from the first listen. The former is a dark piece of music that crawls around through menacing riffs and ominous keyboards and that, instead of exploding in a melodic release, on the chorus gets even darker with Lübcke’s raspy and metallic vocals sounding particularly foreboding. “In My Arms” is a fairly standard Royal Hunt’s ballad, but it has good melodies, a particularly emotive guitar solo, and a nice middle-eight with some interesting vocal arrangements. The other tracks are also decent, but are less impressive.
Overall, Changing Skin is a good album that Royal Hunt’s fans will surely lap up in a heartbeat. Its main limit is that it does not really try anything different from what André Andersen had been doing with Royal Hunt for nearly a decade at that point. Was it necessary to release a solo record so close to his main band, with many of his bandmates as guest musicians? Perhaps not, it might have been more interesting to explore new avenues or at least use a substantially different line-up to liven things up a bit. But being a big Royal Hunt’s sucker, I can’t complain too much really, as Andersen delivers the goods as usual and I cannot not be happy about that.