EDGUY Age Of The Joker CD (2011)

By 2011 Tobias Sammet had already built Avantasia into a sprawling prog-metal circus, so when he came back to Edguy it was with the energy of someone who had nothing left to prove and therefore absolutely everything to say.

Age of the Joker is Edguy at their most comfortable in their own skin, melodic power metal with a smirk, an ear for massive hooks, and enough bombast to fill an arena they're absolutely not playing in. It doesn't have the raw hunger of the early records but it doesn't need it. This is a band that spent two decades perfecting the art of the anthemic chorus and it shows. For fans of the melodic European metal tradition who know their Gamma Ray deep cuts and have strong opinions about which Blind Guardian album peaked the genre, this is a satisfying entry.

2011 full-length album on CD. German pressing. Power metal. Fans of: Blind Guardian, Gamma Ray, Avantasia, Demons and Wizards, HammerFall, Iced Earth.