It's 1994 and after 10 years of albums, nothing's changed for Running Wild. Two more lineup changes! Thilo Hermann comes on board to replace Axel Morgan, and Jorg Michael to replace Stefan Schwarzmann (with another former Running Wild member Jens Becker, Morgan and Schwarzmann's new band X-Wild launches this year with 'So What!'). Amazingly enough, the unyielding Rolf Kasparek manages to churn out another winner. This is a far better album on the whole than 'Pile of Skulls' or 'Blazon Stone', almost every track on this is inspiring. Ignore the silly into and feast your ears on glorious tunes like "Black Hand Inn", "Soulless", "The Privateer", "Fight the Fire of Hate", and my favorite of the album "Freewind Rider". The '95 reissue contains bonus track "Poisoned Blood". At first I was dismayed when I got the American version of this album, on the back of the CD the epic "Genesis" was listed as only around 4 minutes in length (I had been told the European version of the song was much longer). This is a royal mistake, because the track is actually represented here in 15 minutes length! And come to think of it, all the track times on the packaging here are fucked up. Needless to say, I was glad for the mistake. This is an amazingly good album, a must have along with 'Port Royal', 'Death or Glory', and 'Blazon Stone'.

© 2000 pizarro