SCANNER — Hypertrace (review)

Album · 1988 · Power Metal

5/5 · 2016-03-09
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Hypertrace (1998) is the debut full-length album by German power metal act Scanner. Scanner were a follow-up to the heavy metal act Lions Breed, with three members carrying over to the new band. Lions Breed had previously released the album Damn the Night (1985). While Scanner themselves would always have a traditional heavy metal side to them Hypertrace saw the band take a turn towards power/speed metal. This band was never as well renowned as the likes of Helloween or Blind Guardian as far as the early German power metal scene goes, but in Hypertrace they produced one of the scene’s early gems.

Hypertrace is a science fiction concept album, though strangely with the tracks presented both out of sequence and with what can only be described as missing chapters on the original version as both the bonus tracks that have appeared on Hypertrace issues over the years form parts of the plot. Wizard Force was a CD bonus track while Galactos was a Japanese bonus track. Fortunately more recent reissues include all ten tracks that make up the Hypertrace story, though you’ll still have to play them in a different story to experience the story chronologically.

You can find this information in the album liner notes, but the actual order events would be the tracks (including bonus tracks) in this order: 6, 3, 4, 9, 7, 10, 1, 8, 5, 2. The thing about this album though is that even with a concept the songs are done in such a way that they are there to be enjoyed as songs and can be enjoyed in whatever order you see fit to listen to them in. Album order, story order, or whatever order you damn well please. I did however listen to the album in both album and story order for this review and it works just as well either way.

High speed energetic compositions are the main focus, with some mid-paced heavy metal thrown in to vary the album up a bit. Being quite early in the European power metal timeline means that Scanner’s music has more bite in it than the genre is normally given credit for these days but Hypertrace is still an insanely epic and catchy album. Just try to stop yourself singing along to a track like Terrion or Across the Universe. It’s not easy. Some tracks are more growers to my ears than others, such as Grapes of Fear, but overall it’s a very easy album to listen to and remains rewarding even after multiple spins over a short time.

Singer Michael Knoblich is a real asset to the band both as a vocalist and a lyricist. Unfortunately Hypertrace is the only Scanner album to feature him which may go some way to explain why these guys never made it as big as Hypertrace suggests they should have been. They followed up Hypertrace with Terminal Earth (1989) after bringing in S.L. Coe as the new vocalist but then dropped off the map until the mid-nineties when two more albums were released, Mental Reservation (1995) and Ball of the Damned (1996) (which are actually the only two Scanner albums to share a singer) and disappeared again. Fifth album Scantropolis (2002) would eventually appear, this time with a female singer, but then Scanner wasn’t heard from again until their latest release The Judgement (2015). The only one of these that I haven’t yet heard at least once is Mental Reservation. I can’t say that the others come close to the strengths of Hypertrace based on first impressions alone, though they’re all good to even great albums.

Hypertrace though deserves recognition as one of the genre’s best releases. 1988 was an impressive year for power metal from both sides of the pond with Germany producing classics from Helloween and Running Wild and the US with Crimson Glory and Attacker. Hypertrace is right up there with any of them. And with the album recently reissued by Scanner’s current label Massacre Records with all ten tracks included there is no better time to finally add this one to your collection.