{"id":14659,"date":"2015-05-29T01:00:08","date_gmt":"2015-05-29T05:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/southeastofheaven.com\/?p=14659"},"modified":"2022-01-06T19:51:03","modified_gmt":"2022-01-07T00:51:03","slug":"content-needed-album-review-axel-rudi-pell-magic-moments-25th-anniversary-special-show","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.southeastofheaven.com\/?p=14659","title":{"rendered":"Album Review &#8211; Europe &#8211; War Of Kings"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><img decoding=\"async\" id=\"irc_mi\" class=\" alignleft\" src=\"http:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/en\/2\/23\/Europe_War_of_Kings_album.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"298\" height=\"298\" \/>Europe &#8211; War Of Kings<\/strong><br \/>\n<strong> Release Date: March 10, 2015<\/strong><br \/>\n<strong> Label: Hell &amp; Back Recordings \/ UDR Music Release<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>There are seven words I never thought I would be saying in 2015: I fucking LOVE the new Europe album! Yeah, that\u2019s 7. Hell, I never thought I would every say those words as I don\u2019t think I ever fucking loved a Europe album. Sure, I feel into that hole as a teenager in the 80\u2019s and bought The Final Countdown because, well hell, who didn\u2019t buy that album? The Final Countdown was a cool song. So was \u201cCherokee\u201d and \u201cCarrie.\u201d Hell, now that I think of it, maybe there was more to that album that I remember. Oh hell, that\u2019s beside the point but yes, Europe has a new album out and guess what? It\u2019s fucking amazing.<\/p>\n<p>So my first thoughts when this album was brought to my attention was, \u201cJust how good can a new album by Europe be in 2015?\u201d The minute the opening track \u201cWar of Kings\u201d kicked things off, I was left literally with my jaw on the floor. Is this really the same Europe? \u201cHole in My Pocket\u201d had me totally nodding my head in disbelief as to just how fucking epically awesome this song was an by the time the stellar \u201cThe Second Day\u201d track kicked in, I found myself scrambling over to Wikipedia to confirm that this was even the same band. That very band who is now legendary for that horribly cheesy 80\u2019s based keyboard neutered hard rock has put out an album that sounds like it could be a long lost Deep Purple album.<\/p>\n<p><center><iframe src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/maWKkRJR1xM\" width=\"420\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/center>Before we go on any further, I just have to take a moment to address just what a fucking monstrous lead vocalist Joey Tempest turned out to be. So many singers from these guys era have withered and faded from glory while this guy\u2019s voice has grown and matured to be a powerful, soulful, epic classic rock voice. \u201cThe Second Day\u201d has to be one of the single most bad ass songs I\u2019ve heard in ages while songs like \u201cCalifornia 405\u201d, \u201cChildren of Mind\u201d, and \u201cAngels With Broken Wings\u201d just follow suit. Ok, I just need to stop here. Why? Because I honestly cannot even begin to put into words any more just how much I love this album.<\/p>\n<p>I could honestly go on forever about how fantastic War of Kings is. War of Kings is a solid, flawless album from start to finish and it\u2019s the album that I never thought I would hear Europe make in 2015. Hell, this is an album that I never thought Europe would make and honestly, I\u2019m even more astounded that they even did something that I would give a rat\u2019s ass about. War of Kings is a hard rock masterpiece that has Europe paying tribute to the greats that inspired them such as Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, and yes, even some Black Sabbath in there for good measure. With War of Kings, Europe went from being a band that I had long forgotten about to being a band that has put out one of my favorite fucking albums of 2015.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Europe &#8211; War Of Kings Release Date: March 10, 2015 Label: Hell &amp; Back Recordings \/ UDR Music Release There are seven words I never thought I would be saying in 2015: I fucking LOVE the new Europe album! Yeah, that\u2019s 7. Hell, I never thought I would every say those words as I don\u2019t think I ever fucking loved a Europe album. Sure, I feel into that hole as a teenager in the 80\u2019s and bought The Final Countdown [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,277],"tags":[1342],"class_list":["post-14659","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-album-reviews","category-music-news","tag-europe"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.southeastofheaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14659","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.southeastofheaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.southeastofheaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.southeastofheaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.southeastofheaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14659"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.southeastofheaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14659\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19728,"href":"https:\/\/www.southeastofheaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14659\/revisions\/19728"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.southeastofheaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.southeastofheaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14659"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.southeastofheaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}