Customer Reviews

Land of Broken Hearts

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While it's true that the early Royal Hunt albums pale in comparison to the DC Cooper-era releases, they are still good albums that are unfairly looked over.

Land of Broken Hearts was the band's debut album. If nothing else, you have to admire Royal Hunt for debuting with a keyboard-heavy, melodic metal sound at a time when that style was not very well received. The songs on Land of Broken Hearts are a bit uneven. There are some filler tracks on the album, but it also features some of the band's all-time classics, such as Flight, Age Gone Wild, Kingdom Dark, Stranded, and the title track, which is a personal favorite of mine.

Vocalist Henrik Brockmann does an admirable job, but it's hard to see him as anything more than a placeholder for DC Cooper, whose all too brief tenure with Royal Hunt would take the band to new heights of success. Fortunately we got to hear DC Cooper perform some of the album's better songs on the double-live set "1996".

Overall, Land of Broken Hearts was an impressive debut from a band that would continue to improve, and is worth checking out if you're a Royal Hunt fan.

NOTE: There are a number of different versions of Land of Broken Hearts. The best is the 1999 SVP reissue, which adds three bonus tracks (acoustic versions of Stranded, Land of Broken Hearts, and Age Gone Wild) for a total of 15 tracks.

Royal Hunt has evolved over the years. The band's original vocalist, Henrik Brockmann, sounded like your typical metal guy with a foreign accent. It's amazing how much better Paradox is.

This is the first RH album and it is a great debut which they would go on to surpass on later releases. However as a beginning this is great melodic metal with a neo-classical feel. nice melodic choruses invade most songs which will have you raising your voice in no time. There are two neo-classical instrumental pieces which also sound great. I bought the Cd in a used shop for £3 in London and unfortunately it is the only RH Cd I've got. but I do know that they became way better after this with a world class vocalist called DC Cooper. If you find it cheap somewhere get it!!!!

By the time I got through the third track,I could tell this CD just wasn't for me.'Land Of...' was apparently their debut effort.I can honestly say there is some solid playing as well as decent melody intact.Some of the cuts here I thought were 'okay' are "Age Gone Wild","Kingdom Dark" and "Easy Rider".Basically just straight ahead rock and roll(or maybe indie pop?)without much to offer.