antiReviews: Doro - Calling the Wild

1.Terrorvision 
2. Dedication (featuring Al Pitrelli)
3. White Wedding
4. I wanna live
5. Kiss me like a cobra
6. Love me forever (featuring Lemmy)
7. Pain
8. Give me a reason
9. Fuel
10. Scarred
11. Now or Never (featuring Slash)
12. Alone again (featuring Lemmy)
13. Constant danger
14. Burn it up (Bird of fire)
 

Without exception, I like all the metal bands that have ever come out of Germany.  Of the two best bands Germany had to offer when traditional metal was at it's peak (Scorpions or Accept), I always liked what Accept had to offer in the form of the heavier, more gutteral vocals of Udo Dirkschneider, and the Rip-your-face-off guitar playing of Metal God guitarist Wolff Hoffman.  I still get a hard-on whenever I pop any of my Accept CD's into the CD player and hear songs like "Restless and Wild" and "Fast as a Shark".  Yeah, I still like the Scorpions too, and I think everything up to "Blackout" is great.  With the resurgence of the Worldwide Metal Onslaught beginning in the mid to latter part of the eighties, Germany once again offered up something new and exciting in the form of a band called WARLOCK who had a guitar and drum sound very similar to that of Accept, and a Teutonic Goddess named Doro who came out the gate screaming WARLOCK's anthemic brand of power-metal, and becoming every Headbangers Heavy Metal fantasy in the process. 

Year 2000 finds the Metal Goddess in fine form, with a new release, and a new direction.  That direction is to stay true to the music without following any of the power-metal trends that incidentally WARLOCK helped to create back in 1987.  Although Doro is fond of the past, she's firmly planted in the present.  Doro has set out to, and succeeded in creating something that is solely Doro's and not a re-hashed version of her former band.  Doro had the fortunate experience of collaborating with some of the best in the business on her latest masterpiece.  How nice it must be to be able to call Lemmy on the phone and the next thing you know you're on a plane to Los Angeles, only to end up in the studio recording a duet of Motorhead's "Love Me Forever" off the 1916 album with Lemmy for your own album.  And as an extra bonus, Lemmy christens his unreleased ballad "Alone Again" by releasing it on "your" album, complete with him playing flamenco guitar on the track.  How cool is that?!!

Ex-Alice Cooper, present Megadeth guitarist Al Pitrelli does a star turn on the riff-infested track "I give My Blood"(Dedication), which tells a heartfelt story of coming to the crossroads in ones life, and making individual choices for ones self.  Right after "I give My Blood", Doro does something she's normally against and treats us to her tuned down cover of Billy Idol's "White Wedding".  While in New York collaborating with guitarist Jimmy Harry on the tracks "Scarred", "Constant Danger", and "I Wanna Live", Doro hooked up with Slash, who was in town mixing his album "Ain't Life Grand".  Slash enthusiastically contributed his patented lead work to the track "Now or Never", which is the kind of tune that pulls out all the stops and lets it rip the way Slash is so good at doing.  Work on this album took Doro from Germany to Los Angeles, to Nashville, to New York.  She went to wherever it was necessary in order to get the best collaborators she could, and the results are killer.

This record has an overall feel of something that's subtle, yet brutal, in that it runs the whole spectrum of going to all the extremes (power ballads to Straight ahead rockers).  Doro has given us a record that is by far the most wide-ranging, honest, and emotionally felt traditional metal to come along in years.

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