Stala & So
Play Another Round

I usually give all albums the first run in the Macbooks worthless standard speakers and to me that's some kind of first test - can an album sound good despite the terrible quality of these speakers then you'll be almost certain the album will be good no matter how you treat it. Not many albums will sound good with this audio-rape but one of the few albums that did sound good despite being played through some of the worst speakers on the planet is this new Stala & So album, called *play Another Round'.

I liked the first album by Stala and his So, unfortunately I recieved that album such a long time after it was released and then also took a bit too much time on my own to write a review of the album, but until I noticed how late it was I had started to write a few things about that album and since this one have some similarities with that I thought I'd use some of the things I wrote about the first album in this review. Like this tremendous description of the band: "we get classic rock and classic hard rock music without anything strange at all. This feels like a band that could enter a stage and just totally take over whatever place they're in with this music, even if they play in front of a crowd where absolutely no one has heard them before. They make it sound so easy with these classic rock anthems that has such a nice flow, great touch and uncomplicated melodies."

I'm almost certain you've heard some of the guys in Stala & So play even if you haven't heard the band Stala & So before, because as I wrote in the other review there are a few familiar faces here: "The entire album is an orgy in classic rock spreading all the way from the 70's to the 90's. The voice of Stala has been heard before, doing backup vocals in Lordi in the days when Stala (or Sampsa as he's actually called) played drums as Kita in the monster charade band between 2000 and 2010. Here Sampsa does the lead vocals and his somewhat worn and hoarse voice works great in this vintage styled music. The bass player Nick Gore (or Niko Hurme) also have a past in Lordi where he was called Kalma and the band even have a member that has played in hanoi Rocks."

Now we have a new album to play and the Finns doesn't make any major changes to their music here (which is the reason why I quoted what I said about the first album so much). The songs have some very catchy choruses and they all work excellent regardless wether you've heard the songs or even the band before or not. There are eleven tracks on the album but also two bonus tracks (at least on the album I've received) where one is their most famous song from the first album, called Pamela and with which they participated in the Finnish leg of the Eurovision Song Contest. The other bonus song is a cover version of Ozzys Shot In The Dark made scaled down, slowly with acousticc guitars. All in all these 13 tracks makes 49 minutes of music and that feels like just the right amount to me.

I'd say that this album is somewhat better than the first not only because the overall standard of the songs are better on this but also because the best songs are better than the best on 'It Is So'. I really like Sampsas voice despite the fact that it's either nice or feels schooled but it reminds me of fellow countryman Ville Laihiala and is packed with emotions and sounds so natural that it doesn't need to be "good" in that fashion. In fact, it's not just Sampsa, the whole band and album lacks something that shines that little bit extra but still I think this album has a really high standard and several really good songs! If you ask me then I say that it's one of the best albums of the year so far and everyone that likes a somewhat scaled down rock album with some light version traditional hard rock should definitely check it out, try it on and I'm sure you'll like it! It's really, really close to a six point score and definitely one of the five best albums 2013 this far.

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