Free Fall
Power & Volume

We are in the house of Nuclear Blast, home to many clone bands (!).
The Free Fall are among them, and with their Power & Volume, they descend from cold Sweden with rock fury, not wild west horse fury.
Press play, and it starts off strong with the title track, and okay. Moving on.
All the hard rock is well done, very well, but there’s nothing new on the western front, friends. The smell of Led Zeppelin and other sacred monsters is thick in the 12 tracks of Power & Volume. If you like a bit of holy rock played well, you're in the right place; these Free Fall hit it hard in a fantastic way. Don't expect to find any particular innovations inside; you certainly won't be exclaiming “damn, this is great” in the sense of “I've never heard it before,” but it will inevitably lead you to crank up the volume knob of any of your sub-par devices because the album flows well, plays well and there’s always some rock played as ordained from above.

Power & Volume could easily be an album from the glorious '70s, and the Free Fall could have been born in the '40s, no one would notice, and maybe no one did. The first listen immediately feels like the tenth, such is the familiarity with that rock business there. And that, as far as I'm concerned, isn't really the best; when I put on an album for the first time, I don't want to feel like I've already heard it. Or worse, copied.

An album that fits to evoke that now-past rock atmosphere with a group that plays excellently. Mattias Bärjed on guitar, I have to admit, kicks prairies of behinds placed face down; songs like Midnight Vulture or World Domination we drink them up with pleasure. It deserves a listen, nice clean rock played well, but nothing new.
Seventy.