Not very long after their last album, Royal Hunt are back and they release an interlude album called The Watchers, not that I mind, since I really like this band, but let's face it, the band will never be the same without DC Cooper and that's a fact.

This Watchers, is an album that mixes new versions, live versions and other radio edit of known songs. Although I don't like the "money" label that such releases usually bear, I must say that I was very intrigued by some of it's content, especially newly singed versions of song that were originally recorded with DC on vocals. Same for older songs like Clown In The Mirror, One By One, Legion Of The Damned and Day In Day Out... I wondered if the new production level of the band (which is quite high) would enhanced these songs, or if it would be a joke like the newly recorded versions of Gammaray songs were Kai poorly tried to replace what I consider one of the best singer of the metal scene : Ralf Scheepers. But that's another subject and I can tell you that I largely appreciate The Watchers than Blast From The Past (which should have stayed there :)). The album starts with a full version of the newly song Intervention, quite full actually since it's now a 14'12 long... and that version is very progressive and I quite like it. Then comes a round up of live songs, Lies, Flight, Message To God & Epilogue. The sound of live version is fairly good, it doesn't loose to much power of the studio recorded track and that's really nice. Overall a nice surprise. I had assisted to a Royal Hunt show in the Swiss festival Metal Days in 2000, and I had been highly disappointed by their performance, they must have been in a bad day I guess. Only disappointment is Message To God, but then again we're back on my main complain, that DC Cooper is highly missed, and that's the perfect example. a song as powerful as Message To God is really soft and lose it's impact with the new singer. Note that I don't take the care of remembering his name, although he's a good singer, it's difficult to listen to songs you love so much with someone else at the vocals. But I'm very surprised that he sounds quite okay in both live and new version. On the other hand, Epilogue is a total blast live and I'm very happy to see this magnificent track (one of Royal Hunt's best) on this album. So in the end it's a good surprise for the live tracks.

Now let's see about these new recorded versions : From the first notes of One By One, we can feel the power of the new production giving more depth to this song, and that's were this release is really something very interesting, it's that it really brings interesting, high quality material to the fans of the band, new and old timers (since our Royal Hunters have been there for a while). One By One is really powerful and the spirit of the original song is still here. Very good ! Amongst the new ones, Day In Day Out is really cool too and the same goes to The Legions Of The Damned which also benefits from the lifting in production. The album ends on a radio edit of Intervention, I find it pointless to uses the same songs twice, since there's already quite some good material on the disc, and this one is definitely a filler, but well, it doesn't hurt anybody I guess.

All and all it's a good surprise, what I considered to be a money maker tends to be more of a very good quality and I even prefer listening to The Watchers than The Mission. The artcover is still very simple, although more detailed than the last one (with Bryce, the application used to make it) even appearing in the screen of the computer on the art). Although I hated the artcover of The Mission, this one is more nice, and goes very well with the always present, in front, keyboards in the sound of Royal Hunt. For all fans of the band, you can blindly invest without fear. Happy hunting !