Prayer - Silent Soldiers (2018)

PRAYER are back! It has been some 12 years since we were presented with the album Wrong Address (ESM117), which really set the pace way back in 2005 and gained the band a cult following. Then they followed up with an excellent album Danger in the Dark (ESM241) in 2012 and gained some more fans along the way. If you are unfamiliar with Prayer well they play Melodic Rock/AOR and hail from Oulu in Northern Finland. They are the brainchild of Tapani Tikkanen who is the main driving force behind the band. Tapani´s musical career began in the early eighties with IC-Rock and continued later with Tanna . Together with those bands he did hundreds of gigs all over Finland but after several albums and more than 20,000 records sold, it was time for a break. However, he kept writing songs, such as three albums for the craziest football club in the world, F.C. Rainbow and a solo single entitled Everyone s a Winner . Tapani wanted to create a band that brought out his rock and roll heart. After the recording of a few demos Tapani contacted his friend and keyboard-wizard Jari Huvila to talk about forming the band PRAYER. Since Wrong Address there has been some line-up changes, which now features distinguished keyboards player Mika Pohjola as well as Tom Pohjola on Bass. Prayer excel in exciting hard melodic rock with a style that joins together the best of Thin Lizzy, Saga, Treat and sometimes a little bit of Royal Hunt. Their music has meaning and these guys are all committed to making this one of the most talked about Scandinavian bands in recent years. Anyone with a penchant for soaring vocals, driving guitars and plenty of keyboards are in for a real treat. Just check out songs like Fires of the Heart and Feel like a prisoner for prime examples of their work. This is a superb album and certainly their best to date. It's as if all your prayers have been answered.