Album Review: Grave Digger - Bone Collector
Reviewed by Carl Black
Perfection are the simple and easy things done well, regularly and consistently To celebrate their 45th anniversary as a band, Grave Digger having blazened this motto on the side of their pirate ship.
However they have left the pirate ship tied up in the dock ready to be de-scurvied. They decided to go back to basics and create an album with a harder edge and less sea shanty.
The result is Bone Collector, an easy to listen to, heavy, heavy metal album with extra helpings of power metal. Much of the material sounds like it could be run offs from the sacrifice era Motorhead sessions. Fast double bassing over filthy guitar riffs. They are fast, slick and clean as a whistle. The album is deliberately striped back to a time when things were simpler… back to a time when Grave Digger had it all to go for. I think they're happy in their metal skin 45 years in and the songs reflect this happiness in their metal world.
They do change it up across the fifty or so minutes this album plays out for. You get a slow ballad type song in “Mirror of Hate” for example. “Kingdom of the Skulls” is very stompy, and if ever they were to say “we are Gravedigger and we play rock and roll” the song that would follow that introduction would be the “Devil Serenade”
With a band like Grave Digger doing a forty five degree turn is never going to be on the agenda. Stripping back to their metal roots is about as radical change as you're going to get with this band. They could have been more avenue for experimentation and variation. The songs can be split into six categories which they've repeated that makes up the eleven or so tracks. It has the feeling of two mini albums thrown together.
But because Gravedigger do this so well the album is a very nice listen. I think it's maybe two songs too long. With a striped back ethos, a shorter, sharper shock would have been better for the listener as by the time you reach “Whispers of the Damned”, a slower Ballard type song, the impact is slightly blunted.
Great start the 2025 for Gravedigger. This will see them well into their 46th year.
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