Renegade Five
Nxt Gen

After their debut, Renegade Five was extensively celebrated in their home country Sweden with nominations to several music prizes, like a Swedish Grammy for example. However, the road from there hasn’t been as easy and now they are back with their second full length album after three years has passed and two members has been replaces, as well as a record label. This 13 songs and 50 minutes long album is filled with modern hard rock and pretty much all the songs are capable of becoming hit singles. They all have very strong choruses and comes with melodies that can carry you around in the same way camels can carry you across deserts until you get to a village where a band of Egyptian robbers take all your possessions so that you only have one way out – to prostitute yourself to them for 50 minutes in order to be set free.

The album begins with electronics and first out is the toned down The Next Generation that feels somewhat flat in comparison to the songs that follows. Erase Me feels to me like an upcoming hit that just awaits its moment at the time. The first single out of the album, Alive, follows and like most of the songs on this album it has a good chorus and lives mainly on the catchy melodies in the song. Compared to the two before, and a few of the songs that follows, I’d also say that this song have putted the electronics in a more central position. The second song already released from the album is the title track of the EP Life Is Already Fading, in which they have help from female vocalist Elize Ryd to give this song more of an Evanescence sound, like female fronted American modern rock, which the rest of the album isn’t really at all. I think this is the most unique song on the album, this and the acoustic version of Running In Your Vein that ends the album. This was probably the biggest single of the debut album, but here it’s played acoustic.

Most of the songs on this album are closely related to modern hard rock with an electronic or perhaps industrial sound. The songs are all quite closely related to each other without becoming repetitive or that the sound starts to get monotonous. The songs may be similar but they still feels quite unique and as songs of their own. I never feel this album stagnate and really sounds bad, instead the impression is that the album is full of quality everywhere and I think it’s a pleasure to play the album and by now it’s been going warm over and over many times without my impression cooling off. As far as I see it this album is one of the highlights of the year and the best album I’ve heard from the first quarter of 2012.

Renegade Five might have a song writer that has played Euro Disco for 15 years (and with great success) but that hasn’t kept him from writing just as great rock songs. ‘Nxt Gen’ is a really good album – well played and well produced. I can’t wait for a chance to hear even more from this band…