Holy Grail might be my favorite band in the “New Wave of Traditional Heavy Metal.” Vocalist James Paul Luna is the best in that genre and if you don’t believe I may fight you over that. I’ve been listening to “Crisis In Utopia” since the day it came along with their first EP, “ Improper Burial”. I’ve always been blown away with what they able to do musically so I was fucking stoked when I saw they were covering Rainbow’s “Kill The King” and arguably the best King Diamond song and the pinnacle of his career; “No Presents for Christmas.”
But how do the songs stack up? I’ve never been a really big fan of Rainbow myself, but I do like some songs and “Kill The King” is one of them. I think Holy Grail did a good job on it, I love that they didn’t try and make it sound like it was still Rainbow or Luna to sound like Dio. It was cool to hear the song remade and reproduced in modern day, it really did breathe new life into it.
As for “No Presents for Christmas” this was the song I was interested in. KTK was a nice taste…but this is the meat and potatoes for me personally. Amazing. Again the band didn’t try and sound like the original but they also didn’t change anything. Luna does NOT try and be King Diamond, he does NOT try and hit the falsetto notes, he sings it James Paul Luna would. Although the laughs sound eerily too much like The King’s.
Rating: 10/10
It’s easy to rate an EP with two songs a 10, but it deserves it. Both covers are fucking good and you can’t help but put it on repeat sit back, and get in the “Fuck Christmas” spirit.
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