Pretty Maids + Animalyze @ Train, Aarhus 6/12/2025

Rockin' around the Christmas tree

(Guest reviewer + photographer: Magnus Jørgensen)

Despite the rain and a hangover, I'm feeling giddy as I enter Train in Aarhus for one of the traditional Pretty Maids Christmas shows. By now, the December run of gigs from one of the finest metal bands Denmark has ever spawned is more than a tradition; like the band, it's an institution in Danish metal.

But first up: Glam metal newcomers Animalyze. Their debut album, "Powerhouse" ('25), impressed me like few newcomers do. Not because of their songs – which are solid – but because of that that incredible sound. That magical, multi-layered, and hyper-produced sound of Leppard, KISS and Crüe that grabs you by the heart and balls. It's as derived as can be, but at the current stage of rock music, jacking off the giants is an honest job.

Sadly, the show falls flat. The sound is thin and so low that the drums dominate. The performance is solid, and the costumes are wonderfully tacky, but Animalyze really need to bring a keyboard player and/or use a backing track to get their sound across. But the singer's half-hearted attempts at speaking English to his native Danish crowd bring me a lot of joy.

The audience in the front of stage are digging the whole thing, though, and a cheeky cover of Led Zeppelin's "Rock and Roll" bring huge cheers. I hope to see Animalyze grow in performance, sound, and popularity, because this band has a lot of potential.

Rating: 3 out of 6

In the social sciences, people's trust in the institutions and civil society is often regarded as a measure of how fundamentally functional a nation-state is. I propose that the same may be the case for metal.

Enter Pretty Maids. Times change, but exceptional songwriting and performances don't. I would trust these guys with my life to deliver a rock-solid heavy metal show. And being listeners of true heavy metal in Denmark, if we don't have the Maids to hold on to, what's left?

Anyway, first, we need to deal with the outrageously shitty sound on the opening trio of tunes. I go to the other side of the venue, but it's even worse over there. Otherwise excellent drummer Allan Tchicaja's china cymbal crushes everything, and in the cacophony, otherwise excellent songs like "Kingmaker" and "Face the World" drown in noise.

A rocky start, but all is forgotten as Maids take off with the good ol' riffarama of "Back to Back" and "Red, Hot and Heavy". I have no idea what button the sound guy pressed, but from here on out, we're friends.

And speaking of friends, Ken Hammer, dressed to the nines, does those wonderful guitar solos that seem note-perfect but have an edge of chaos. There are red-hot (!) chants all around, and in a moment of clarity, I realise that "Walk Away" would be Springsteen if he played heavy metal.

And that's the thing: Songwriting is everything. The songwriting of mainstay tracks like "Future World" and "Little Drops of Heaven" isn't just impeccable, it's exceptional. There's a reason why some bands are great and some are shit (and no, that is not a matter of opinion), and why Pretty Maids belong to the former category.

It's also equally true of that equally unavoidable, semi-tacky, and crowd-pleasing "Please Don't Leave Me" (R.I.P., John Sykes). While I would never play that song at home, it's so wonderfully unspectacular. Your pulse goes to a resting level, and it feels like a palate cleanser before the intensity of the final celebration of rock music that are "Future World" and "Love Games".

Christmas needs to always be spectacularly traditional, and that's exactly what the gems in Pretty Maids are.

Rating: 5 out of 6

Genre: Hard rock / heavy metal
Date: December 6th, 2025
Venue: Train, Aarhus, Denmark
Organizer: Train