Robot Claw

The new Alphaville album is out, and it’s called Catching Rays On Giant:

A promo video (in German).

It’s been seven years since Crazyshow – their last new material – and the current version of the band itself has changed as well. Of course Marian “I am Alphaville” Gold is still running the show (writing, singing and producing) so I’m pleased to say the sound that is Alphaville remains.

So what is that sound? Unfortunately there is no video of the first single, “I Die For You Today”, in album-version, but here’s a video of the radio remix.

The album version is better. I don’t think the beats work in that remix. It worked well enough apparently, since the song got to number 5 on the German charts!

Despite being 26 years older, Marian’s voice hasn’t changed much. His songwriting is as good as ever, and after only a few listens I found the album had grown on me in a big way. Of course Alphaville has always been on ‘heavy rotation’ in all my music players, so this isn’t surprising.

My favourites on the album so far include “The Things I Didn’t Do”, “Call Me Deep” and “Carry Me Down”. The latter is unusual in that it is the first Alphaville song in 26 years not sung by Marian Gold.

So all in all, I’m giving this one two thumbs up after a week of solid listening. Is it the best Alphaville album? No, but then I doubt they can ever beat the 4CD’s of Crazyshow. But it’s not the worst either, it’s just another in a relatively long line of very good albums from one of my all-time favourite bands.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 1st, 2011 at 1:56 pm and is filed under Music, Otaku. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.