Burn – Rock Royale – 2010
When I first heard Burn on My Space it was really to my liking. But listening to one or two songs doesn’t make a complete impression and I felt I needed to hear more. I contacted Burn and a few days later a Promo landed in my mailbox. I think I needed that so this could be a just review. To write reviews of stuff you asked for is the most difficult task of all since you can’t really say if the complete impression is as good as the first few songs you listen to very quickly just to make up your mind if it’s interesting enough to explore further.
In this case it was never a problem at all though. The album as whole deliveries more than I could ever hope for really and it’s really good. It sounds just like early Kiss in to some extent and if you are in doubt, lines like Me And My Band Will Be Playing All Night will put you back on the right track again. There is defiantly a Kiss sound here. Background vocals arrangement sounds more like The Who and you can almost hear Who Are You? Who? Who? from time to time. Further more, the band themselves claims to have been influenced by Alice Cooper (Who hasn’t?) but I personally think that there’s more similarities to what Michael Bruce did on his own. But if you compare to early albums like Love it to Death or Killer you sure find some similarities.
It’s hard not to tap your foot in the beat of the music and it’s not hard to think of Thunderstick when listening to Rock Royale. It might not be so flattering for Fredrik Jacobsen to be compared to Thunderstick, but it’s not a negative comparison really. I’m not talking about technical competence here, just the fact that the Thunderstick band made a point of themselves on Beauty and the Beasts (that is even if Burns female member Petra Engdahl doesn’t sing lead but plays piano and tambourine), similarities in imagery so to speak. Some influences might have come from Gary Glitter or maybe rather the Glitter Band but it’s nothing that defines the album.
What defines the album though is that there’s a lot of live feeling to it and Burn themselves claim to be a live act first and foremost. I haven’t felt up to going to a rock club for many years but if Burn plays, I really wouldn’t mind being there! Martin Friberg – Bass and vocals does a great job and doesn’t fall into the trap of sounding to Swedish in his accent, which often is the case with Swedish singers. Martin also wrote most of the music and lyric together with the bands guitarist Daniel Axelsson. He plays the guitar with joy or so it seems and I’m very impressed by what I’m hearing from Burn. I must follow this band in the future because I would be very sad if I missed out on an album with this gang!
