Additional information
Personnel: Mattias Bylund (piano, keyboards); HCSS, Mikael Henkelman (background vocals). Audio Mixer: Tobias Lindell. Recording information: Bohus Sound Recording. Photographers: Micke Johansson; Fredrik Strömberg. Arranger: Mattias Bylund. Just a quick warning: Hardcore Superstar don't play hardcore. Doesn't mean they ain't hardcore, though, in an old-fashioned, balls-to-the-wall hard rock way. They like words like "sleazy" and "decadent," but that's another lie, or maybe a self-deception; sure, the debt to Mötley Crüe and W.A.S.P. is there, but they're just too raw and heavy, owing as much to German no-frills metalheads like Accept or even early Grave Digger. It actually looks like they're trying to re-create that late-night '80s vibe of glorious vice and excess: the anthemic chorus in the title track is ample evidence of this, and besides, there's the album cover. But it's hard to imagine music less fit for wooing glamorous girls, be it during the heyday of glam or three decades later: the sound is more at home at a biker convention, think Hell's Angels. Jocke Berg's rasp alone is more scratchy than three-day stubble, and the riffs are more vicious sometimes than even Guns N' Roses, though they never borrow on punk to achieve the effect. Even the obligatory acoustic ballad is titled "Here Comes That Sick Bitch," and sounds the part. And it's this rawness that is the main selling point of the album, capable of catching the attention of headbangers beyond the old hard rock crowd: sure, the template for Split Your Lip has been copied to death, but the music has enough ferocity and venom to match most of the industrial or alternative metal acts that were supposed to do away with glam and sleaze. ~ Alexey Eremenko
