UMUR Outpost - Fort Europa is the 2nd full-length studio album by Danish death metal act Panzerchrist. The album was released by in 1999 by Serious Entertainment ( a now defunct Danish label started by prolific Danish musician/ producer Jacob Hansen). Outpost - Fort Europa is now out of print and is only available as part of the Himmelfartskommando (2008) compilation album released by Mighty Music.

Since the release of Six Seconds Kill (1996), there has been quite a few lineup changes which means that only bandleader/ drummer Michael Enevoldsen and lead vocalist Lasse Hoile remain from the debut album lineup. New guitarists are Kim Jensen and Rasmus Norland while Michael Enevoldsen brought in his then girlfriend Karina Bundgaard to take care of the bass duties. Both Michael Enevoldsen and Karina Bundgaard play keyboards on the album.

Exactly the addition of keyboards in some tracks on the album, makes Outpost - Fort Europa a quite different listen to Six Seconds Kill. While the music is still mainly good and catchy death metal, the band has added more melody and recognisable elements to their sound on this album. Some of the tracks even have an epic sound to them which IMO fares well with the war lyrics. Especially the instrumental closing track Surrender is Not an Option really sound majestic. It´s slow and heavy and has great atmospheric keyboards/ piano. Another track that stands out from the rest is Fort Europa. It´s another instrumental with some great melodic guitar leads. The basis is as mentioned above still death metal though and most songs feature mid-paced to fast playing and growling vocals.

The production by Jacob Hansen is a notch better than on the debut but still a standard sound for this kind of music.

Outpost - Fort Europa is a better and more varied release than Six Seconds Kill and it´s nice to hear that the band have evolved since the debut. I think a 3.5 star rating is deserved. On a sidenote this would be lead vocalist Lasse Hoile´s last album with Panzerchrist. He would quit the band to pursue a career as a visual artist. Some might recognize his name because he has created lots of the visual art for Porcupine Tree among others.