The name Chinchilla has been cause of many questions in the history of this German heavy metal act. One simply has to admit that a name like Chinchilla doesn’t really coincide with a heavy metal act, nevertheless the band claims in all their interviews that the name is unique and thus helps one remember the band. This is indeed very true. Of course one shouldn’t judge a band by their name alone and moreover this particular Chinchilla is one that bites and barks!

“Madtropolis” combines eighties heavy metal and hard rock with more modern influences in a mixture that kicks. At times Chinchilla calms down and hides its teeth behind a slow melodic ballad but most of the time it rages like a pit-bull. Sometimes the music reminds of a band like Metal Church and especially the vocals of Thomas Laasch, who by the way does a fabulous job on this album. His vocals are powerful and straight to the point and really push the album to a higher level.

The production of the album is decent although I find it slightly chaotic at times and especially the sporadic keyboards could have been mixed in a bit more powerful but that might be a matter of taste.

“Madtropolis” has only two weak points; one of them is the song “Satellite” which is a bit too glam rock sounding to fit this album and the second one is the terribly cliché keyboard intro. Why does every band nowadays have to have an intro-tune?

Although the song titles hint at a concept album this however is not the case and the lyrics are parables that describe the current sad situation of the world we live in, where freedom is a commodity and although there’s plenty of it, it comes nevertheless at a price.

With “Madtropolis” Chinchilla shows that good old heavy metal is still very attractive indeed; they throw in some modern elements and some hard rock influences and all of a sudden they manage to sound quite refreshing. Sure, the music is nothing new but they have nevertheless managed to at least sound sincere.