EUROPE – Walk The Earth

EUROPE - Walk The Earth
  • 7.5/10
    EUROPE - Walk The Earth - 7.5/10
7.5/10

Summary

Hell and Back Recordings
Release date: October 20, 2017

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8/10 (3 votes)

Resurgent Europe kick off their eleventh album (their third in five years) with title cut “Walk The Earth”, a mournful, Deep Purple-washed track that sounds, lyrically and sonically, like it could be the sequel to the ubiquitous song that launched their careers into the stratosphere, propelling the album for which it was named to fifteen million record sales worldwide.

That earlier song has the protagonist fleeing the planet from an implied apocalyptic event; the new song has the protagonists back and walking the Earth “with our heads held high” and “like champions”. A bold and interesting counterpoint to the bands’ world dominating single as well as a bold lead cut, “Walk The Earth” has none of the fanfare or bombast as its predecessor, instead serving as a slow tempo showcase for Joey Tempest’s mournful, world-weary voice.

Follow up “The Siege” kicks into a higher gear, and again the Purple influence is pronounced and evident with plenty of keyboard atmospherics. On Walk The Earth, Europe strike a balance between the ballads and rockers, following sentimental “Pictures” with the harder hitting “Election Day” and then sliding back into a dark slow groove on “Wolves”. Tempest has some great moments on the record, time has given his once soaring voice some soulful edges that enhance the emotional content of the songs, and guitarist John Norum cuts loose on some of the more upbeat numbers like “GTO” and “Whenever You’re Ready”. Seven-minute mini-epic “Turn To Dust” closes the album, one of the strongest in the decades-spanning Europe catalogue.

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Author

  • Daniel Waters

    Daniel was a reviewer here at Metal Express Radio. Iron Maiden’s Piece Of Mind wasn’t the first Metal album he owned, but it was the one that lifted the lid off his soul when he received the record as a gift on his 15th birthday. He's been a Metal fan ever since. He's probably best known as the author of various Young Adult novels such as the Generation Dead series and the ghost story Break My Heart 1,000 Times, now also a major motion picture entitled I Still See You, starring Bella Thorne. Writing and music, especially Heavy Metal music, has always been inextricably linked in his mind and career. His first paid gig doing any type of writing was for Cemetery Dance, where he wrote a horror-themed music column called Dead Beats, and when he was writing the first Generation Dead novel he had a ritual where he started his writing day with a Metal playlist that kicked off with “Crushing Belial” by Shadows Fall.

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