Hard to believe that the Spiritual Beggars now celebrate the twentieth year of its existence. One can not blame them so to be caught on dei retro rock track, they have played this music for a long time before she was "modern" again. Although in my eyes and ears no album will ever get back at the 2000 masterpiece "Ad Astra", but as an over-disc you can not beat halt. At that time stood still on Spice Mirko and on bass, and the man can halt unfortunately no one hold a candle. The new vocalist Apollo Papathanasio (fulltime with Firewind) but also makes an excellent job and it shows that he, too, who actually comes from the field of melodic metal and hard rock, dirty power in the voice can have. The bass takes over the last few years Sharlee D'Angelo, who anyway at all belting to the bass felt every third band. Unfortunately, one of the hammering bass sound not as nice as it was a turnip in Spice. The pig organ of Per Wiberg roars still top notch, bandleader Michael Amott played excellently and song serve on the guitar, and the drums of Ludwig Witt sounds like a real drum kit, not as artificial and inflated, as is customary in modern productions. The Spiritual Beggars have always played a mix of stoner and classic rock, where the Stoner-share to "Earth Blues" is relatively low. You could say this is energetic, dirty Classic Rock that comes along anything but dusty and stuffy. Just listen times Pops as "Dead End Town", "Too Old To Die Young", "Kingmaker" or "Freedom Song", then you know what I mean. Stylistic diversity is also given, the opener "Wise As A Serpent" for example sounds from Groove forth strongly by Lenny Kravitz '"Are You Gonna Go My Way", "One Man's Curse" and "Too Old To Die Young" have a certain radio-felling. A very good album that up with me for days and goes down. Since you can only congratulate the twentieth anniversary.
