I discovered Chinchilla with their last album Madness, especially with one of the most beautiful Metal hymn they wrote called Fight. This song has become an instant classic and one of my all-time favorite songs. It's chorus is simply majestic while the heavy feeling simply blew me away. Although Madness contained absolute killer songs like Fight, Madness or Freedom, I found it contained also pretty medium tracks, not a lot.

This new album is the logical continuation of Madness, where the band follows the same musical path, delivering heavy riffing, great guitar melodies and solos (à la Iron Maiden) and drumming à la Heavy Metal of the 80's (unlike most band who use faster double bass drumming). Their singer is an amazing mixture of Tobias Sammet and Bruce Dickinson (I bet these 2 are strong influences for him). He doesn't possess the same ranges than these 2 giants, but he delivers excellent emotional vocal performances. This The Last Millenium is their most mature albums of all, very constant (no boring tracks), the boys deliver an impressive piece of metal here, not following any trend and sticking to what they like to do best, heavy riffs and incredibly catchy choruses, thanks to the beautiful vocal lines of their singer Thomas Laash. Some keys smartly used, adds the little plus in the atmosphere and perfectly enhance the sound of this Heavy Metal band. Songs like War Machine, Demon's We Call and Father Forgive Me will stay in your mind long after the first listen, you'll even find yourself whistling on the road or singing "The War Machine Is Coming..." under your shower. This band is definitely getting better and better. Songs like After The War, Victims Of The Night or The Highest Price are neckbreakers. The album also contains a nice cover song of The Boys Are Back In Town. Although I respect Chinchilla's choice on using classical 80's drumming, I found the drums to be a bit weak and too basic from time to time (especially on some verses), it certainly wouldn't hurt to get a more complex drumming during these moments.

The production is pretty good, but still I'm sure the impact of the band would benefit from a bigger production. The artcover is for once a good one, I say for once cause usually I discard their artcovers otherwise I wouldn't want to buy their releases. The images that a band displays is very important (artcover, band picture, ...), and so is the band name I think, so this is an area were I think Chinchilla have but traps on their own path. I hope their talent and love for metal will help them overcome these cause these guys are really great !

A very good album, nearly (but surely) approaching the masterpiece level. I've got the feeling that their next release will be the determining one. If you don't know this band and like Melodic Heavy Metal, then don't waste any more time and go get The Last Millenium, you won't regret it !