Dansk version

At any given time you could be forgiven for shivering in your studded jockstrap when a band gets it into their minds to revisit former "glories" and re-record songs from earlier in their career.

Partly because those "glories" are often best forgotten. Partly because of numerous examples of the word "re-recording" being synonymous with "idea draught".

Well, despite certain reservations on my part that is luckily not the case with Danish Heavy Metal veterans Pretty Maids who've re-recorded eight old songs and added four new ones on "Louder Than Ever".

The old songs were originally recorded between 1994 and 2006 and it does make sense for PM to re-record songs from en era that mostly consisted of dark hours for traditional metal and hard rock.

An era where this kind of stuff sold like soaked biscuits on the dessert menu at a gourmet restaurant.

An era that not really ended in the case of Pretty Maids till they hit back furiously in 2010 with new producer Jacob Hansen who must take a lot of credit for revitalizing and energizing the old boys with the  "Pandemonium" album.

Sledgehammer
That energy remains in 2014 and songs like "Psycho Time Bomb Planet Earth", "Tortured Spirit" and the dark  minded teeth clenching "He Who Never Lived" and "Virtual Brutality" gets the sledgehammer-to-your-balls treatment with Hansen at the production helm and acquires a degree of necessity they never possessed in the original versions (on "Scream", "Carpe Diem" and  "Planet Panic" originally).

Having said that I have serious problems to a certain extent with some of the songs Maids have chosen to re-record.

Greater minds than mine will have to explain the finer points in the fact that there's not one fucking song from the 1997 album "Spooked" here. I'd say that would've been a glaringly obvious album to chose from badly produced as it was while at the same time containing of plethora of great songs. Enough of them actually to justify re-recording "Spooked" in its' entirety.

On the other hand Maids have found room for two songs from "Anything Worth Doing Is Worth Overdoing" and one from "Welcome To The Real World" – arguably their weakest records.

Well, go figure.

But that's the way the cookie crumbles and luckily "Louder ..." is still a good album even if it could've been even better.

Rare form
And this is where we get to the new songs that once again underline the fact that Pretty Maids really are in rare form these days.

Both the heavy "Deranged" and first single "Nuclear Boomerang" are classic Maids and ample proof that the arsenal is still stocked with plenty of live ammunition while the semi ballad "My Soul To Take" is a pretty relative to the 2010 hit "Little Drops Of Heaven".

Okay, the rather formulaic ballad and album closer "A Heart Without A Home" doesn't really take off. However, a lot of girls will be ready to argue that point with me – not least thanks to singer Ronnie Atkins' soulful delivery on that song in particular.

There you have it: A nice "in-between" album (as the band themselves have dubbed it) to pass time with until the next PM album with all new songs.