The Hellacopters

Rock & Roll Is Dead

(Universal)

Record Review by Karen A. Mann

Those who remember the Supershitty to the Max!-era Hellacopters might well conclude that rock & roll is dead after listening to this CD.  From their humble beginnings as balls-out, young-loud-and-snotty, garage-punks, the Stockholm band—which led the Scandinavian garage-rock revival for years—has steadily softened its sound into radio-friendly classic rock.  That’s not necessarily a bad thing, because as wonderfully brash and sloppy as the old stuff was, you always got the sense that the band was capable of so much more.

They hit artistic paydirt on 2002’s High Visibility, an album which managed to combine their love of classic, ‘70s rock and soul with punk’s energy and angst.  And then they released, By the Grace of God, which included a couple of good, but not great, songs, and sounded as sterile as “Supershitty” was, well, shitty.

That leads us to Rock & Roll, which has a good bit more soul and better songs than By the Grace of God, but still feels bloodless compared to their earlier works.  One big problem is that the band has noticeably devolved from carrying the classic rock torch to blatantly ripping off their idols.  The opening song, “Before the Fall,” is nothing more than a cleaned-up Chuck Berry riff.  It’s well done, but without a shred of originality. “Leave It Alone,” could have been an outtake from Exile on Main Street, and “I Might Come See You Tonight,” sounds like a mish-mash of FM radio’s greatest hits, circa 1977.

But when The Hellacopters are on, they’re really on, and several songs on the CD show flashes of their old fire.  There’s no denying that their musicianship has improved by leaps and bounds, even as their edge has softened.  Songs like “Everything’s on T.V.,” “Murder on My Mind,” and “Put out the Fire” manage to be catchy without being cloying and feature some pretty fine guitar work.

Rock & Roll probably isn’t quite dead yet for The Hellacopters.  The most apt description of this CD might actually come from the title of one of the CD’s more middling songs: “Nothing Terribly New.”