TRANSPORT LEAGUE – Boogie From Hell (CD)

It’s been over ten years since the band’s previous album Multiple Organ Harvest. So has the power weakened, or are they still a force to be reckoned with? Time to check out this Boogie From Hell then. Suck me sideways!! This album is really a musical kick in the joint! Swing Satanic Swing starts off with a punch in the nose and continues like a steamroller with its power-stomp! This is brutal! Transport League has always been a Swedish institution of powerful metal, but I think I may have really re-discovered this Gothenburg foursome on this album. The sound is like a ton of bricks, with Roberto Laghi providing his usual powerful mix! The songs are really groovy for being so heavy, which really makes the title appropriate. Tony is a vocal power plant with a brutal, throaty, raspy voice that fits the music like a glove. He sounds a bit like James Richard Anderson of Texas Hippie Coalition on steroids. What I really love is that it’s not just chord-crunching, but lots of cool heavy riffs being thrown around. I also hear a strong southern touch, which may interest fans of bands like Hell Yeah, THD and Anti-Mortem. This is a bloody great album, indeed!

Janne Stark

Label: Metalville

Year: 2014

Country: Sweden

ABSORBING THE PAIN - H3ads Up (CD)

Damn, someone put a big phat sledgehammer in my mailbox. It said “Absorbing The Pain – H3ads Up” on it. This is the third album from this Swedish power pack. In my review of the previousl album, Songs Of Hate With Love”, I compared the band to Black Label Society with singer Jonas a bit reminiscent of Band Of Spice singer Christian “Spice” Sjöstrand. I still stand by that statement. The band has simply written another bunch of ball-breaking tracks in the same tradition, but without repeating themselves. Despite the concrete heavy riffing there are melodies, and with melodies I don’t mean any cheesy pop-lines, but classic hard rock melodies. The track Dimetime reminded me a bit of the best tracks of the last B-Thong album (where Mustasch’s Gyllenhammar had taken over the vocals), but with a chorus that owes more to Pantera in their prime. There are riffs here that gives me goosbumps, like the phat seven string treatment in Bully and Basement. The latter has a really cool verse, with a quite unexpected floating style. Hollow adds some acoustic guitars to the platter. The song is quite cool, but I’m not really one hundred percent into the vocals on this one. Jonas’ vocals are otherwise one of the strong points on the album. Peo also gets to show some good solid guitar shreddding, here as well. No use going through all the songs, simply because they all rock, each one in its own way. Sure, it’s heavy as hell, but it’s still quite diverse. A killer album, again!
Janne Stark
Label: Samsound/Rambo
Country: Sweden
Year: 2012