Grave Digger – Fields of Blood

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It’s so hard to write about a so seminal and mythic band as Grave Digger. There are so many things to say because they are a very dear band to me and I’ve been following them for a long time. I guess the first time I heard them I was about 17 years old and the first effort was “Witch Hunter.” I was at a friend’s and he showed me the song without me handing me the cover. You’ll laugh at me, but my first impression was that they were a very faster Accept with an angrier vocal. I won’t say that at very first I thought they were Accept, but as I knew there were no new Accept album then I got suspicious and said nothing about it. Bottomline, the friend showed me the cover and I knew Grave Digger.  I got instantly a fan of the band.Then somehow I got aware of “Heavy Metal Breakdown.” Yeah, I know “Heavy Metal Breakdown” comes first, but to me it came after, all right? A reminder, Grave Digger are one of the pioneers of the teotonic Power Metal wave that showed their straight ahead and fast as hell music to the world. Then, the commerciallis virus affected the band as it affected many others that time in the middle of the 1980s and the band split: one part was Grave and the other Digger. Don’t ask me…

Cut to the 1990s. Grave Digger reunited – I don’t know the exact details because I got lost from the band since they split – and embarked in a quest for the Highlands and more complex music. I met the band again circa 1999 by a magazine CD compilation cassete that a friend recorded to me. The song was “Tunes of War” and I can’t help it to say that I was very impressed by their new sonance. Well, it’s no wonder that this new sonance took them to the Metal stardom though to the old fans like me the raw and pungent music they made was the thing that was missing somehow.

Now cut to 2020. This is their twentieth album and “Fields of Blood” marks the fortieth anniversary. I don’t have to say that is very well-deserved. In short, Grave Digger took very seriously the ‘don’t mess with success’ idea. “Fields of Blood” is the sequence of their trilogy about the Highlands history and it abuses of the sound of Scottish bagpipes that appears in many songs. The epic battlefield mood continues to haunt the band and the outcome is one more album with high doses of emotion and anthemic songs. Diehard fans are going to just love it because Grave Digger were teotonic precise in fulfilling the fans desires. Me? Glad you asked. I miss the old raw and direct sonance. I do.

Grave Digger “Fields of Blood” will be released on May 29th via Napalm Records.

Track Listing:

  1. The Clansman’s Journey
  2. All for the Kingdom
  3. Lions of the Sea
  4. Freedom
  5. The Heart of Scotland
  6. Thousand Tears
  7. Union of the Crown
  8. My Final Fight
  9. Gathering of the Clans
  10. Barbarian
  11. Fields of Blood
  12. Requiem for the Fallen

Watch “All for the Kingdom” official lyric video here:

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