Hellacopters
Supershitty To The Max
White Jazz Records

I think it is spelled r-o-c-k a-n-d r-o-l-l, this ancient art of rebellion and loud music. I'm not sure, though, but a couple of guys who most certainly know how to spell it are The Hellacopters. Based in Stockholm, they play the kind of rock The Stooges and MC-5 invented and developed in the early 70s but in a modern way, filtered through and influenced by punk rock and the heavy-metal scene of the 80s. It's loud, it's fast, it's noisy and it will probably make your ears fall off, or possibly bleed heavily, just the way it should be.

With song titles such as Spock In My Rocket, 24h Hell, Random Riot and (Gotta Get Some Action) Now! you know what to expect and you get lots of it. It's melodic hard-core with lots of distortion, because The Hellacopters is a band who knows how to write good rock-songs and they truly, truly love distortion. All the vocals are distorted, the drums are distorted, the piano is distorted and I think even the distortion is distorted. It sounds great, but will probably make your loudspeakers commit hari-kari.

It's not very innovative, though, and you've probably heard something at least a bit similar before. The genre is such, that it's impossible to take it any further except by raising the volume, but this band is far beyond eleven on the volume scale and it most certainly sounds supershitty to the max, whatever that means.

Copyright © 1996 Erik Starck