Humbucker
R.O.C.K.S

The Norwegian quintet Humbucker rocks. At least according to their own album title, unless they mean the stony things or the ones sticking out by the ocean, as it's called "rocks" in capital letters (and dots in between). This is a sort of "big" rock 'n' roll album in the vein of the classic hard rock that came and dominated in the 70's and the norse has done everything well from the beginning on this one. For starters they've used one of the finest recording studios in Norway and one of the best producers to help them with the recordings. Then they've sent the material to one of the best mix and master guys in hard rock. It's not very hard to hear that they are very proud of what they've achieved, but is it a global success? Well, I don't know.

If you look the final product here we do have a very good album in 'R.O.C.K.S' and an album I think they rightfully should be proud of. The music is big, heavy and rocking like a ship on open water in full sidestorm - a real treat for anyone that likes this kind of music. It will probably cause earthquakes from how it will thunder out of garages in the countryside where greasers works on their shiny big American cars. But I don't see Humbucker crossing that magical line to when their music is borderless in genres, which is when also people that aren't fans of the genre likes the music. I really don't see people from outside the old school hard rock liking this and I don't know if this was a target or not for Humbucker - to reach these people - but if I were them I definitely would have had that target when I finally decided to record an album and had recruited the proficient people. Therefore I wouldn't see this album as a complete (global) success but it's still a very good hard rock album so it's still some sort of success.

It's taken Humbucker 14 years to come to this stage where they've recorded and released their debut album, however the recording started about a year before the release and by then the band had already had the time to take an eight year long break before they reunited in 2010 and decided to gear up in intensity. Now their hopes are to play the Sweden Rock Festival and I personally can't see too many other bands that has debuted since last years festival that suits Sweden Rock better. It's the Jurassic Park of rock 'n' roll and Humbucker do play their hard rock much in the fashion of the jurassic era - heavy, rollin' guitars with simple melodies and an American feel to it, flavoured by a hammering rhythm section that's reminding me of the sound from Harley Davidson mopeds on idle running. This is much like a southern rock band, or perhaps a biker band but with a slightly more sophisticated sound.

The ten songs on 'R.O.C.K.S' are all pretty different from each other and you get everything from a really strange ballad called There Will never Be Another which half way through becomes something completely different. And Dancin' Daisy that concludes the album is a nice audience flirt, an awesome song to play as an onchore, if they ever get that opportunity. Overall I'd say they do a good job and get the most from the 70's scene of hard rock in to this album, and it also sounds pretty good most of the time. They keep the playing time just under 40 minutes, which is good and unlike most debuting bands of today that doesn't know when to stop and stuff their albums to max with everything they've ever done - regardless of the quality. But 'R.O.C.K.S' has good length, good variation and is made good enough. I feel that the album is better than I actually think it is because when you analyse it deeply you can't deny it being really good everywhere. However, my complete impression is still that I don't love it. It's good, but not really my thing.

However, for all you out there that love Bonafide and all the old dinosaurs that Bonafide has xeroxed, please feel free to try out Norways version of Bonafide because I think this is way better than Bonafide and works very well when you hear it. And all this despite I don't really like this kind of music, so well done guys!

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