Saffire
Taming the Hurricane

For their fourth album the Swedish band called Saffire are trying to tame a hurricane, they describe their process like something similar to that. Perhaps a stormy creative process can make for an interesting album. And it has been a little stormy within the band as well with a new drummer coming aboard for this album. The new drummer is described as a groovy powerhouse, but I guess he didn’t do any drumming for this album considering that it sounds neither groovy nor powerful. It looks kind of like something from days long gone, the logo looks like something from an old hippie band rather than something from one that released its first album in 2013.

And they kind of sound like a band looking in the rear-view mirror, and not a modern fresh thinking band. For some that is probably a positive statement, but I personally rarely like it when bands don’t even try to add something unheard to the scene. There is just so much stuff already released so each new normal heavy metal or power metal, hardrock, or almost any other sub-genre album is just a waste of time and resources. Taming the hurricane is nothing like venturing to close to an approaching storm, rather the opposite, it is like the ones evacuating to well beyond a safe distance. The singer is a boring hard rock singer who sounds like any other archetype singer, no personality. And the playing time is too long, the production is okay but neither exciting nor terrible.

Everything about this album feels average, not at all Swedish. Kind of like something I would have thrown together if tasked with making an album I didn’t want to make. Just make it decent enough, spend as little time and effort as possible making it, and just turn it in. That seems to be the process of this album (but it probably isn’t as I know that most musicians are working really hard to make their albums), it feels like I have played it too much the first time I hear it. It is a decent album, not bad in any way, but nothing about it feels interesting, exciting or fresh – where is that groovy powerhouse drummer I read about? Where is the sensation of taming a hurricane? Where is the risk? This is a tame and cowardly album, not at all like driving a car into a tornado or being in a hurricane zone. It is just another one of those.

I don’t think this album needs to be heard or released. Some will probably disagree, and that is fine with me, but I do think that the majority of people interested in music want to hear something fresh and interesting and this album is neither. Next time they should dare more, take the fight to the hurricane and try to tame its power – not just cowardly escape and watch the hurricane on TV.

HHHHHHH