After numerous delays, Destiny’s long awaited anniversary album, Climate Change, is finally released. Climate Change is available on CD, for download and streaming. GMR Music Group released the album on October 21st and a double vinyl release will probably follow at a later date.

Climate Change is Destiny’s first album in 11 years and was preceded by two digital singles with accompanied videos. The first one being “Living Dead”, released in 2015 and the second one is “Sabotage”, released last month. It’s also the first Destiny album featuring singer Jonas Heidgert (Dragonland) and guitarists Michael Åberg (Nostradameus) and Veith Offenbächer (Dawn Of Destiny).

The album features 14 songs, all brand new recordings. Five of these songs are old Destiny songs from the 80s that never made it to any album before. All of those five songs have brand new lyrics by Håkan Ring who was the lead singer on Destiny’s debut album Beyond All Sense, released in 1985. The reason for this is that no one had copies of the original lyrics.

“We tried to stay true to the original vocal melodies and what small parts of what we could hear of the original lyrics on the very poor cassette recordings of the songs that were available”, says Stefan Björnshög.

The oldest of these tracks is “Money Preacher”, which was originally written in 1983 when Theres Hanserot was still the vocalist in the band. The song was later reworked several times and finally scraped in 1985, mainly because the lyrics were never fully completed. The new version is based on a rehearsal room recording from 1985.

Three of the songs were originally written in 1985 after the recording of Beyond All Sense and planed to be used on the, at the time, untitled second album.

“Duke Of Darkness” was only performed live one time in 1985, but was very well received by the audience. The new version is based on a rehearsal room cassette recording from 1985, just prior to Magnus Östermans departure from Destiny. Unfortunately that recording only featured half of the song, so some new music was written and added to the song.

“Lead Into Gold” and “Ruins And Destruction” was performed live three times in 1985, and was also well received. The new versions are based on a live performance from the fall of that year, just prior to John Prodéns departure from Destiny.

“Dream Reaper” was originally written in 1986 and planed for inclusion on Atomic Winter. but was omitted due to the time limits of vinyl albums. The song was however played live regularly in 1986 and 1987. The original title was “Sheer Death” but has nothing to do with the other song of the same name, also on Climate Change. The original lyrics where by Zenny Gram but he had no interest in working on the new lyrics. When Håkan Ring was approached to do these lyrics as well he agreed, but he did not want to hear the original version as he wanted to do his own version and so the song transformed into “Dream Reaper”. The guitars for the verse were also reworked as they where somewhat similar to another song. These changes make the song quite different to the original version.

Apart from current Destiny members Jonas Heidgert - vocals, Stefan Björnshög - bass, Michael Åberg - guitar, Veith Offenbächer - guitar Kane Svanteson - drums, Cimate Change features some guest spots by these former Destiny members: Guitarists Knut Hassel and John Prodén, vocalist Håkan Ring, drummer Roger Christiansson and keyboardist Carl Dahlgren. Other special guests on the album are drummer Adde Larsson, vocalist Anna-Mia Bonde, keyboardist Elias Holmlid (Dragonland) and Henrik Pettersson also keyboards.

Tracklisting:

“Duke Of Darkness”
“Living Dead”
“Medieval Rendezvous”
“Lead Into Gold”
“Nothing Left To Fear”
“Sabotage”
“Sheer Death”
“Money Preacher”
“No Reservation”
“The Devil In The Dark”
“The Evil Trinity”
“Dream Reaper”
“Beyond All Sense”
“Ruins And Destruction (Climate Change)”

“Living Dead” video:

“Sabotage” video:

(Photo - Viktoria Larsson)