The name Royal Hunt appeared for the first time in 1989 as the brainchild of André Andersen (main songwriter) and it was created in order to combine basic values of Classic Rock with progressive, current musical elements. Today, after selling approx. 1.5 million albums and touring the world numerous times, the band’s still going strong…

After countless local club tours the band secured their first record deal with Teichiku Records, Japan (Panasonic branch), a management deal with Majestic Entertainment (USA) and a world wide publishing agreement with Warner Chappell.

Debut album – “Land of Broken Hearts” – came out in 1991 and sold 35, 000 copies in Japan alone; soon after it came out in the USA (through Rondel Records), where it created a buzz through a net of college radio stations.
An instrumental piece from the album – “Martial Arts” – was picked as a theme tune by the Japanese Wrestling Federation and still is the best selling “sports single” in the country (passed 150,000 copies).

Another tour followed bringing the band to Japan as well, where some unplugged performances created a demand for an “exclusive” release – “The Maxi Single” (1992) ­– which contained 4 unplugged versions of songs from the debut album and two new tracks.

The follow up album – “Clown in the Mirror” – recorded in Denmark and mixed at House Of Music, NY and mastered by the legendary George Marino at Sterling Sound, NY was released in 1993 by the abovementioned labels and – sold beyond 60,000 units – brought the band on the road again, only this time including a two month tour across the USA… aside from Europe and Japan.

Right after the tour the band got their first “hit”, releasing an EP containing 4 live tracks and a new song – “Far Away” (1995) – which went to the top of the Japanese rock charts and stayed there for 3 months, pushing the sales figures up to 70,000 units… a longer promo tour brought the band to SE Asia and most of Northern Europe.

Next studio album – “Moving Target” (1995) – recorded/mixed at Medley Studio (DK) with Lars Overgaard behind the desk, was the first album to be released world wide (Royal Hunt  inked a deal with Long Island Records in Europe) and paved the way to a 72-date world tour, selling approx. 120,000 copies. Various rock publications throughout the world honoured Royal Hunt as “the best live band of the year” as well as “the best album of the year”.

The next year saw the band releasing a double live album – “1996” -  accompanied by a “8-camera-shot-full length VHS” (the concert was filmed/recorded in the prestigious “5,000 seater” Gotanda U-port Hall, Japan)… a combination which is still regarded as one of the best live releases of the decade.

“Paradox” – the album which many fans (as well as press) is considered to be a “classic” – came out in 1997 and propelled Royal Hunt to the top of numerous rock charts around the globe, followed by a 4 month non-stop tour and another “live CD/VHS” – “Closing the Chapter” (1998) – showing the band (through a 12 camera set-up) performing the entire “Paradox” with a huge stage production (completely sponsored by Martin Lights (DK).

In 1999 the band released their next studio album – “Fear”­ –  this time through SPV (Europe), Pony Canyon (Japan and SE Asia) and Magna Carta (USA). As usual the world tour followed, this time bringing the band to some new territories - Korea and Russia – and ending on the main stage of Germany`s Wacken Open Air festival in front of 75, 000 people. Royal Hunt – again and again – was rewarded with assorted awards for “best live performance”/”album of the year” from various media outlets.

Ray Bradbury’s Martian Chronicles became a basis for a concept trilogy released in 2001: a single “Intervention”, a full length album “The Mission” and an EP “The Watchers” (claimed to be “the longest EP in history”, containing over 70 minutes of material). The following tour stretched over a period of 6 months, this time including previously missing Korea (headliner slot at Pusan Open Air festival – attendance: 25,000, sold out ) and Russia (where the band signed a separate record deal with AMG Records for Russia and CIS).

Without missing a beat, Royal Hunt released their new studio album, “Eyewitness” in 2003 and – in order to regroup and to reinforce some of their business structures - decides to skip another major tour, concentrating on a few selected festivals (incl. FireFest (UK) and Italy’s “Gods of Rock”) as well as countless TV and radio appearances throughout the world.

“Paper Blood” came out in the spring of 2005 and created a substantial stir among the fans and the press by its simplified, aggressive nature and was followed by not one, but two full blown tours; as a celebration of Royal Hunt’s first double live CD/VHS “1996”, the show in St. Petersburg´s Music Hall (Russia) was captured by 7 cameras and released as a double CD/DVD package, simply named “2006”.

Represented by Frontiers Records (Europe), Marquee/Avalon (Japan/SE Asia), Magna Carta (USA/N. America) and CD Maximum (Russia/CIS) Royal Hunt released “Collision Course – Paradox II” in 2008. Scoring high positions on the charts around the world and received rave reviews in the press, the band embarked on yet another tour - this time including countries like Finland, Bulgaria, Hungary and Poland, closing at the main stage of Sweden Rock Festival (attendance: approx. 37,000)

Aside from the abovementioned activities, Royal Hunt played in front of approx 12,000 Danes as a “special guest” with Alice Cooper (Sønderborg) and Deep Purple (Copenhagen, Odense) during the summer of 2008 – with an enthusiastic response from the audience.  In September 2009 the band played to a sold crowed at ProgPower X – USA and in October 2009 they performed at the grand LoudPark ‘09 festival in Tokyo, Japan.

During 2009 Andre Andersen is continue working on the band’s new album to be release in winter/spring of 2010.  Since it’s the Royal Hunt’s tenth studio album, they naturally decided to call it “X”.  The band went back to the roots of Rock and the result is a brand new, astonishing 70´s inspired album.  Here are the comments from the Maestro himself:

”This album came out of our love for the 70´s music (tagged as Classic Rock nowadays) – from Kansas, Genesis and ELP to Uriah Heep and Deep Purple - music which was/is very adventurous while just a tad naïve at the same time (as some might say).

So - as filling up your tracks with sampled orchestra sounds and choirs of Wagner’s proportions seems to be fashionable nowadays, we – mostly for our own amusement – decided to try and recreate the sound of that (70`s) period by digging out some old equipment which was used back then (analogue tape machines and keyboards as well as old amplifiers, drums etc). One can call it a tribute to the great era in music… combined with our urge to go against the flow for some unexplainable reason J ).

Being surrounded by these vintage sounds/technologies (and being challenged by their limitations) creates that specific mainframe for your songwriting as well – a bit different from that’s been indulged for our previous albums - and while we’re not trying to trick the listener “into the 70´s” (which, by the way, has never been our intend at all) it helped the band to write/play/produce in “that way” to a degree… to change the pace while having a lot of fun doing it J ).

As for more detailed description of the music: we all are notoriously resistant to categorize it in any way, form or shape, but (if hard pressed) would go as far as saying that it’s definitely much more hard rock than metal and if by “progressive” you might mean some odd time signatures here and there as well as random key changes – sure, there’re tons of them here… as well as really basic, simple stuff – so go figureJ ).

To sum it all up: if you’re into pre-MTV, pre-computer/digital but pure quality rock – this thing’s been tailor made for you.”