Apr
17
Album Review: The Generals-Stand Up Straight
Blame it on the water (or the a-a-a-a-a-alcohol; excuse us, Jamie Foxx), but whatever (metal) music we hear from Sweden usually turns out pretty darn good 80% of the time. That’s 80% cos one has gotta admit, the remaining 20% belongs to the occasional crap band stinking up our listening pleasure—no names though.
The material at hand is a whopping 11-song debut from four hairy dudes calling themselves The Generals. Just why the f*** you’d wanna call your band “The Generals” is beyond this writer’s IQ. Forgiving the odd handle (give them a break; all the cool band names have long been taken), the material here is impressive. Devoid of frills like excessive soloing and orchestral bombast, The Generals do metal from the gut, the kind possesed by rock n’ roll energy and thrash metal vigour. The resulting concoction is familair yet refreshing. It’s almost too easy to lop these guys into the bloated melo-death scene—you musn’t. The Generals are unique for their sound’s earnest lack of pretentious crap…like excessive soloing and orchestras.
The band—composed of this Hednar guy singing and playing bass, a drummer called Metalmartin, plus the Dick/Rickard guitar tandem—compels you to tear off your shirt and start pulling chest hair the moment “Blessing In Disguise” rolls in. By the time it wraps in four minutes that felt like a breathless 15 seconds, “The Offer Still Stands” is ablaze. You’d be better prepared for the ensuing musical onslaught feeling tipsy-verging-on-drunk, which is the ideal state when appreciating The Generals’ finest beer-metal moments. This explains why their stuff is so infectious, reducing your brain to mush with wrenching numbers like “The Illusionist” and the title track, while getting the blood circulating faster on such furious anthems as “One Eye Red” or the hook-laden “Trunkride.”
As mentioned, the wanky pyrotechnics here are scarce and there’s not a hint of orchestras (two things that need to be stamped out of contemporary metal), so the meat is in the energy that drives each winning track. Whether it’s the rollicking “Punchline” or the mosh pit inducer “Hell Was Built For Heroes,” the whole album seems to zip by in the span of a few frenzied minutes. Now that’s priceless, especially for a debut by relative unknowns. This might not be the second coming of At The Gates, but it hella rules.
-Miguel
