“Regeneration” is the fourth album of Easy Rider, that is probably one of the hardest working bands in the Spanish scene. The year 2001 was an extremely difficult one for these Spanish metalheads, vocalist Eugenio Garaneda left the band without any notice during their “Evilution” tour, followed by the drummer Antonio M. Chaves who didn’t have any hope for the future anymore, so it was the best moment to leave the band. Struggling for new musicians they teamed up with drummer Rafa Diaz (Asgard, Mountains Of Madness) and connected with US vocalist Ron Finn (Chris Caffery of Savatage had a major part in this transfer). Easy Rider plays, for those of you who don’t know, traditional heavy metal, and by traditional heavy metal I don’t mean Hammerfall-like metal, but eighties influenced kind of metal played in its purest form and evolved into the 21st century.

Thoroughbred metal pounders like “No Room In Hell” with excellent guitar leads, “Stranger”, which is a re-recording of one of the previous albums and “Man Made Martyr” are really the songs for the true headbangers among us. There are mid-pace songs such as “Where Angels Fly” and “Eyes That Can’t See” (which reminds me a little bit of Dream Theater) and of course “Regeneration” contains a ballad called “Freedom Fighter” with beautiful acoustic guitars and magisterial guitar leads played by Patrick Rondat (Jean Michel Jarre, Elegy). “Regeneration” could be the album that earns Easy Rider the long awaited international appreciation.