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GRAVE DIGGER
Bone Collector

RPM-ROAR (2025)
Rating: 8/10

Forty-five years after forming, Teutonic titans Grave Digger unleash their 21st full-length studio album. Once again it’s a solid reminder of how consistent this posse has been and so with more striking artwork in tow, Bone Collector kicks off with the title track, and what strikes me immediately is the guitar tone.

It may sound strange, but with this latest album Grave Digger sound a lot darker and, dare I say it, more “metal” than previous releases. Rather than rely on those oft generic and predictable Euro power metal gallops, Bone Collector stirs deeper in the dungeon. Amidst a flurry of thrashing riffs and pounding drums, vocalist Chris Boltendahl barks “In your final nightmare you hear is call; a chilling whisper, a warning for all”. The only let up provided is the chorus, but even then it remains a bruising affair especially with the quake of Jens Becker’s bass.

It could be argued that ‘Bone Collector’ is one of the band’s most convincing songs in a long while, and after I’d experienced its menacing joys I hoped subsequent tracks would be as punishing. Well, they certainly don’t disappoint; ‘The Rich, The Poor, The Dying’ fizzes in with some scorching hot axe work from Tobias Kersting whose tone transports the fans back to the halcyon days of metal and coupled with the burly drums of Marcus Kniep, this tune is another winner. In fact, the band sounds totally pissed off in their steely tirades which sizzle between a volatile thrash and straight up traditional metal pummeling.

Each instrument ploughs a clear, distinctive path; the mixing of each segment being a scintillating expression resulting in a batch of bombastic tracks. Major favourites for me are ‘Riders Of Doom’ with its literal Anthrax-style of chugging. There’s more galvanising axe work on ‘Graveyard Kings’ and the Motörhead-esque bashing of ‘Forever Evil & Buried Alive’. Again I have to refer to Boltendahl because his performance here is of a man possessed, driving forth in similar fashion to Lemmy (Motörhead) or Udo Dirkschneider (ex-Accept).

There are no gimmicks this time round, no layers of cheese to wade through and nary a Celtic bagpipe to wheeze through. Instead, the combo pulverises, like on ‘Kingdom Of Skulls’ which begins with a steady bass line before the guitar and drum add extra thickness to the crunchy charge. “Echoes of pain resonate through the air,” bellows Boltendahl on ‘Killing Is My Pleasure’ as the band taps into hints of groove and thrash, while ‘Made Of Madness’, although contemporary by design, is still a tour de force of blistering instrumentation.

I suppose if I had to be picky and single out a least favourite song then I’d opt for ‘The Devil’s Serenade’ with its standardized mid-tempo structure which in turn tends to dampen the vocals which become more awkward and off kilter. Maybe the same could also be said for stomper ‘Mirror Of Hate’, but hey, it’s a minor quibble more than rectified by the plethora of positives on offer,

The album culminates with the brooding ‘Whispers Of The Damned’ which begins like Metallica circa ‘Enter Sandman’ before turning into a similar chord progression to Ozzy Osbourne’s classic ‘Diary Of A Madman’ until further dark subtleties are revealed. It’s an epic track but a world away from some of the Euro power metal the band have crafted previously. Instead, you find yourself immersed in a dark, almost Gothic landscape perfectly suited to the cover art as flapping, cawing crows circle above misty graves and smouldering buildings.

It’s cliché to state that a band has returned to form but that’s clearly the case with Bone Collector, an album that at times seems more comfortable in the realms of Anthrax circa Persistence Of Time (1990) and latter day Overkill. And I’ve no doubt that after a few spins of this bones will not be collected but broken.

Neil Arnold

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