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Symbol of Eternity is the twentieth studio album (not counting compilations, re-recordings, the tragically misguided "Digger" experiment, etc.) from Grave Digger, one of the stalwarts of German heavy metal. They are a band that has carved out a niche for themselves and has been putting out similar sounding records of varying quality for the past 20 years or so. That means if you've heard anything the band has put out in the 21st century, you already have a good idea of what to expect from Symbol of Eternity. For those that haven't, it's an album full of crunchy, Euro heavy/power metal, not insanely fast but with plenty of get up and go, neoclassical leads and the distinctive gravelly growl of founding member Chris Boltendahl. The lyrics deal with the crusades and templar knights, topics that have been covered before (even by Grave Digger themselves, on the Knights of the Cross album). At the beginning of the album, they are very direct with lots of storytelling from the knights' point of view, including the struggles of the people they were fighting. The first few times I listened to it, it sounded an awful lot like these songs are celebrating the crusades and their religious agenda with the negative aspects of the events not coming through very clearly. The condemnation of killing in the name of religion gets a little more obvious as the album progresses (for example, "The Last Crusade"), but I was still scratching my head trying to figure out what Grave Digger is trying to say. It's a different take on how to tell the story of the crusades and the associated religious genocide, that's for sure. The songwriting is boilerplate Grave Digger with catchy riffs and choruses, squealing solos and all the other things this band has spent a career doing, but with nothing standing above the rest in any way, so this is truly an album for Grave Digger fans. It's another competent but typical addition to their catalog.