•
Rating: Led Zeppelin and Soundgarden, bands that have had their well-deserved success and sold millions of copies worldwide, thanks to the undisputed talent of the musicians involved and the qualities of two of the best singers on the scene: Robert (divine) Plant and Christopher J. (equally divine, though live always left a bit to be desired) Cornell.
A lot of bands have drawn inspiration from these two iconic figures and have shaped their sound in their image and likeness (after all, Soundgarden directly derive from the teachings of masters Plant and Page, just look at how Cornell is adorned on the back of Louder Than Love, if he were blond, he would look just like Plant). This is the case with a Swedish band, The Quill, who continue to produce albums of remarkable quality like this Hooray! It's A Deathtrip (2003), but they fail to capture the audience's attention they deserve, even though critics have always had good words for them.
They are four wild ones who go by the names of Christian Carlsson (guitar), Magnus Ekwall (vocals), Jolle Atlagic (drums), and Robert Triches (bass), but when it comes to playing, they truly show they have the necessary chops. The vocalist, Mr. Ekwall, does not hide his fondness for Rainbow, Led Zeppelin, and Soundgarden, and you can hear in his vocal cords an uncanny resemblance to Mr. Cornell that's almost like a vocal plagiarism shout-out. The others have as reference all the most famous hard-rock bands in recent times.
The result is a devastating concentrate of pure technique and power, well-constructed riffs, catchy choruses designed to stick in the memory at first listen. The Quill are clever, very clever; sometimes they fall into the banal structurally with their songs, but even Audioslave wasn't originality personified (verse, chorus, verse, chorus, solo, finale). The four Swedes have plundered everything possible from rock, to blues, to grunge, to psychedelic, to stoner (echoes of Kyuss...) to meld it all together with respectable results.
"Spinning around" opens the album and immediately you think: is it Cornell? (no...), are they Soundgarden? (no...) so who the hell are they? No one knows, no one gives a damn, but damn if they have something to say! A good guitar riff and a rhythm section that bursts eardrums accompany Ekwall who takes command and immediately debuts with remarkable power and tone. "Nothing Ever Changes", the best, alternates melodic parts with hard-rock slashes with a vocally stellar chorus. "Come What May", the single released on the Rocksound sampler, made me discover the band, and a tear rolled down as I listened to Ekwall's voice, thinking I had found the worthy successor of my, now gone, idol, Chris Cornell.
Great drum attack and riff of "Too Close To The Sun", a track that comes closest to Soundgarden's sound and wouldn't have looked out of place on "Superunknown". Praise to all four for what they do on this track. Perhaps, thinking it through, this might be the best track on the album. Some breathing space with Zeppelin-esque psychedelic and oriental echoes in "Handful Of Flies", only to relaunch with the Sabbath-like granite riff of "American Powder". In my view, Ekwall demonstrates more intelligence than Cornell, using his voice to its best without exaggerating and pushing to the limit, something that cost poor Chris his vocal cords.
"Hammerhead", with its classical guitar intro, eerily brings back the Led Zeppelin, while "Giver" is a tribute to drop-tuned guitars and the granite riff; midway, the tempo changes, everything softens only to explode again at the end. "Man Posed", a slow progression of distorted guitars in the background, echoes of keyboards and megaphone voice, brings to mind the sound of "Wake Up" by the wonderful Mad Season, but the finale grows and explodes, with Ekwall bursting eardrums and Carlsson delivering a very good guitar solo, although then, in the finale, they seem like the Guns of "Civil War".
"Because I'm God" doesn't stray much from the group's philosophy, while "Control" closes the whole thing with soft tones, guitar (great riff) and voice (excellently modulated) with a delayed entry of drums and bass, as if to say "Damn guys, no ballads from start to finish, it's better if we check ourselves here." A masterful closure for an album that didn't receive the success it deserved. If it had been released during the heyday of grunge, it would have been a smash hit...
What a shame...
Tracklist and Videos
Loading comments slowly
