trax:
01.Sacrifice
02.Rocket Ride
03.Catch Of The Century
04. The Asylum
05. Return To The Tribe
06. Save Me
07. Matrix
08.Out Of Vogue
09. Superheroes
10. Wasted Time
11.Trinidad
12.Fucking With Fire
13.Land Of Miracle (live) *
14.Holy Water*
15.Life And time Of A Bonus Track *

release date: 20 January 2006
Label: Nuclear Blast

LineUp:
Tobias Sammet - vocals
Jens Ludwig - lead and rhythm guitar
Dirk Sauer - rhythm and lead guitar
Tobias "Eggi" Exxel - bass
Felix Bohnke - drums

One of Germany's biggest power metal bands right now, Edguy, are back with a follow-up to "Hellfire Club". The new album "Rocket Ride" follows in the same vein as before with ultra-catchy choruses, groovy power chords and cool guitar-solos. Don't expect anything spectacular or even remotely original on this album. It's just more of the same Edguy we've all heard before. Nothing wrong with that of course. Another classic like "Mandrake" this is not, but it's still pretty good.

The strongest songs on this album comes in the beginning of the album. 'Sacrifice', 'Wasted Time', 'Return To The Tribe', 'The Asylum' and 'Save Us' are all great tracks and Tobias Sammet does an excellent performance throughout the album. Though, it must be said that his vocals is essentially what carries the whole album and makes the songs interesting and fun to listen to. Take out Sammet and you have an average album with power chord riffs that you've heard a million times before. The guitar-solos on the other hand are often really good, as well as the piano and keyboard playing. The bass and drums provide a steady rhythm section and keeps things simple and straight-forward. The second half of "Rocket Ride" is where it starts to go downfall and the material starts to sound recycled. All the cool ideas have already been used and the last 5 tracks feels like fillers to me. 'Superheroes' is just boring and 'Trinidad' is just too cheerful and poppy, even for a band like Edguy. More speed and blistering guitars I say!
It seems that Edguy's best songs are the longer tracks such as the 8 min long 'Sacrifice' as well as 'The Asylum'. They should make more tracks like these. The short tracks tend to cling on to the old verse-chorus-verse formula and it gets quite boring in the long run. "Rocket Ride" is still a good album and it's very easy and entertaining to listen to. Edguy sure knows how to write catchy melodies and songs. What the band lacks in originality they make up for with a highly energetic performance. They give the fans exactly what you would expect from them. Not to mention that Tobias Sammet is world-class singer and as longs as he is this amazing then Edguy will live on.

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I really was dead curious to listen to the new Edguy album. I mean, their "Superheroes" EP was really cool but the main song was definitely something totally different than the band’s past. So, I was wondering if Edguy have drastically changed their sound or if the specific song was a one-off attempt for something different.

After listening to the new album for several times I came to quite a few conclusions. For example, "Rocket Ride" is the most diverse album the band has ever released so far. No, it’s not their best (but of course this is something totally personal and not objective at all). So yeah, the album is indeed diverse. The opener "Sacrifice" is rather symphonic with many layers of riffs; a really mature composition. "Wasted Time", "Return To The Tribe" and "Out of Vogue" can be considered as closer to the classic Edguy sound. "Matrix" and "Superheroes" are modern, with a crispy sound. But where the band really nails it is in songs like "Rocket Ride" - damn, this is the song Deep Purple never wrote!!! Or in songs like "Save Me" that most U.S. Hair Metal bands would die to have in one of their albums.

Looking at the album as an entity, I believe that the overall sound is more Rock than ever. This is of course easily explained. The band didn’t want to do another crystal clear computer production. So what you hear in "Rocket Ride" is mostly live recording on analog media. Fuck yeah, that rocks big time.