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Say what you want, make whatever excuses you want, but Grave Digger have been in a slump ever since Rheingold, and that was nine fracking years ago. It's hard for me to really believe that this is their fifteenth album - how many bands even manage to release that many albums? But here we are, and Grave Digger is still kicking, if not as hard as they used to.

Things start off weird with the accordion-filled all-German intro track, which is just bizarre, but then "God Of Terror" gets things going. It's a solid track, so what if it sounds like every other Grave Digger opener ever? "Hell Dog" is pretty good, but shows up this album's great weakness of lackluster choruses that are just kind of obvious and dull. I mean, the chorus of "Hell Dog" is just Chris groaning "Heeeeeeelllllll Dooogggg!" four times over, pretty lame. There are a lot of tracks like this on the album - songs that are decent but completely rote, with no life or surprises in them. "Medusa", the title track - on and on with choruses that are just the song title moaned over and over.

The other problem with this album is that the band seems to think their fans want a lot of slllooowwww songs. They perk things up here and there with speedier cuts like "Death Angel and the Grave Digger" - which may be faster, but otherwise completely sucks. "Walls of Sorrow" sounds like it might be good, but then the chorus is a happy, harmonized piece of shit. As this album goes on it gets slower, duller, and more self-indulgent. Grave Digger are obviously aiming for "epic", and there are still some good guitar riffs to be found, but they cannot put together a good song to save their lives, and the whole thing just drags with pumped-up bombast and empty posturing. Skip it.