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Rating: I have always been a very methodical and precise person in cataloguing and organizing my endless music collection; several thousand CDs and vinyl records arranged with the utmost care and "discipline." This way, it's very easy to retrieve anything I want to listen to, hitting the mark: I could even do it blindfolded with great chances of success.
However, there's a shadowy area hidden away in a remote part of my home where I collect all the music I've purchased but no longer listen to (I'd rather keep these skeletons to myself; to avoid unnecessary and futile discussions, I will not mention any band or individual artist names).
This introduction has a very precise purpose: a few days ago, while dusting off music from my past, I came across this split-album released in the late nineties. A CD I guiltily forgot existed; and I've been asking myself for days how it could have ended up abandoned and forgotten, considering I own the entire discography of the two Scandinavian bands involved in this auditory earthquake: it's a mystery with no solution. I've already relocated it to where it deserves to be!
The Swedish The Hellacopters and the Norwegian Gluecifer: these are the explosive names stepping into the arena for a fairly divided album. Five tracks for Nick Royale's group (aka Nicke Andersson, former drummer of Entombed) and five tracks for Biff Malibu's band.
The Swedes open fire with the first four songs, which are covers: it's the very brief Hard'n'Roll assault of MC5's "American Ruse" that immediately establishes the precise musical coordinates of the entire work. Immediately giving way to the longer and more thoughtful "Working For MCA" of the Southern school, having been written by Lynyrd Skynyrd: with a finale that grows, grows, grows in intensity. For the third and fourth tracks, I'll just tell you that the authors are Wilson Picket and Bob Seger (and damn!).
The last track, the only one written by their own hand, by The Hellacopters requires a nice story: nearly seven minutes of "Doggone Your Bad Luck Soul" that moves between nocturnal Hard-Rock atmospheres in the first minutes and a central part that gradually builds in volume with a noisy guitar fuzz very close to Garage-Rock atmospheres. Finally ending in a sort of circular listening with the same initial movements.
Less technical, even more aggressive execution: this is how Gluecifer presents themselves with their set of five tracks that opens with the amazing onslaught of "Gary O'Kane," a Punk-Rock song that hammers from the very first second and proceeds briskly and derailing through its muscular path; next comes the super-aggressive barrage of "Shitty City," which also races at full throttle in its angry five minutes of duration, with some instrumental moments where the five maniacs seem truly unable to sustain such speeds. But they pass the acid test with flying colors; leaving you really exhausted at the end of their disastrous and short path with another explosive title: "Going Down." A real headbanger.
In conclusion, speaking in football terms: Sweden - Norway 1-1...A draw.
Ad Maiora.
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