Bad Radiator - "BR V" (CD/LP)

 

I don’t know how, but I’ve managed to successfully avoid even hearing about melodic Swedish rockers Bad Radiator, and I discovered them just a few months ago by coincidence. This was with their 2014 album “Shanghai”. A nice discovery I should say. The band has now released their fifth album “BR V”. There was however something familiar about the band’s sound or possibly the name, and after a little bit of research I found out they used to be called Grace and had a mega hit with a song called “Inga kan älska som vi”, theme song for a movie of the same name. The guy who sang that song back then, Krister “Chris Lancelot” Linder is however not in the band now, and the vocals are handled by keyboard player Mikael Lundgren. The other members are Klas Bergvall on guitar, Jan Persson on bass and Roger Hansson on drums. Bad Radiator are nowhere near the poppy Police meets U2 sound of Grace. Bad Radiator has a nice bite to the guitars, classic keyboards and real drums. Only the vocals are a bit reminiscent of the more mainstream vein. The album opens with “Long Way From Home”, a cool semi-heavy thing in the vein of latter days Deep Purple, with the subsequent “Heart Attack” pulling up the tempo a bit adding a bit of AC/DC style guitars, against the very mild vocals. “Coming Home” places itself in the center lane of AOR, while “Came Without A Warning” starts off almost in an 80s synth style, but a distorted guitar enters the room and saves the situation. Another AOR number with a shuffle beat! Klas is a really tasteful lead guitarist who puts some nice icing on the cake where it fits. The title of the song “Rock ‘N Roll” is maybe a bit misleading, since it’s more of a softer AOR/westcoast type song, while “Fake” is more rock ‘n roll – or actually boogie! Sometimes I wish Mikael would just give up a little roar, and maybe a bit more … well, balls, for lack of a better word. If you tell someone to “go to hell”, they should know you actually mean it. Then, on the other hand it’s sort of cool that he keeps it very soft and mild in relation to the heavier music. In “King Of The Lonely” they again enter the aforementioned Deep Purple:esque landscape. In the opening of “Tell Me Why I’m On The Run” you think you’re I for an uptempo rocker, but then Roger drags it down to half tempo and it’s transformed into a cool groovy tune. “I Can’t Take It Anymore” belongs to the same genre as bands like Toto, while the album closer, “the ballad “Falling Leaves”, is probably the closest we get to the old days of Grace, but without the horrible 80s sounds. All in all, a very enjoyable album that should attract fans of classic melodic rock as well as the AOR fans of today.

Janne Stark

Year: 2020

Label: Crazy Feelgood