Eclipse “Monumentum” album review – Out March 24th
FollowIt’s been two years since we last heard a new full length album from Swedish hard rockers Eclipse. Two years that has seen the band play to audiences in Australia, Japan, America and Europe, not to mention the three and a half million viewers who saw Eclipse’s debut on Swedish national television at Melodifestivalen 2016.
With the development shown in their last two albums “Bleed and Scream” and “Armageddonize” the picture was clear, Eclipse were a band to watch. This month sees the release of their new album with Frontiers Music Srl, “Monumentum”, their sixth album overall, so we had a listen to see if this is an album you should take the time to listen to.
In short, hell yeah you should!
The album starts of with the crunching guitars of the killer song “Vertigo”, before hitting you with the anthemic hard rock of “Never Look Back”.
“Downfall Of Eden” combines great, powerful riffs with amazing melodies. “Hurt” gives lead singer Erik Mårtensson the chance to show off his amazing 
vocal talents and at times reminds me a little of Johnny Gioelli.
“Born To Lead” had me singing at the top of my voice (badly, I’ll admit, but hey I’m not the one being reviewed here, OK?) and punching the air. Definitely a song for driving too. A great albeit short guitar solo too, but the guitar work throughout this song is superb.
If i wasn’t already married I’d be trying to get “For Better Or For Worse” played at my wedding. You may well be thinking ‘oh that must be a really powerful ballad’ at this point. Well, you’d be wrong. This is an amazing piece of melodic hard rock with some great lyrics, as is “Night Comes Crawling”.
The album closes with “Black Rain”, arguably the albums heaviest song, which is full of crunching riffs and sees Erik Mårtensson and Magnus Henriksson doing their best guitar work on “Monumentum”.
By the time this album finished, I almost felt exhausted. From start to finish, this was one hard rocking journey of guitar heavy, melody filled, fist pumping, energetic, superlative melodic hard rock. I was impressed by their previous albums, but this one blew me away.
I know its a bit of a cliché to say that a bands latest album is the best, but in this case, “Monumentum” is most definitely the best album Eclipse has made to date. And actually, I’m going to say that this is one of my favourite albums of recent years. As soon as it finished, I went back to the start.
Final rating?
I have to give this a rare Paradise Rock rating of 10 out of 10. This is hard rock perfection. Check out “Never Look Back” below.
As Erik puts it: “When I go and see a band I just want to hear songs that make me wanna put my fist in the air and scream along, and I want everyone around me to do the same. Well, Monumentum is one giant fist waiting for a chanting crowd of rockers. We can’t wait for the people to hear it!”
Better be ready: ECLIPSE are coming to kick your butt! They’ll be in the UK for 5 gigs in April, check out our TOUR section for more info.
ECLIPSE
Erik Mårtensson – lead vocals, guitars
Magnus Henriksson – guitars
Philip Crusner – drums
Magnus Ulfstedt – bass