Published on Jun 13, 2006
Witnessing the history of Hardcore Superstar’s
development as a band has mirrored watching a pendulum swing.
In the late 90s, Hardcore Superstar made waves in
their home country of Sweden with the release of It’s Only Rock
n’ Roll, an album that drew just enough on glam-influenced rock
acts like Hanoi Rocks and Motley Crue to get notable attention
abroad, leading to their signing to U.K and U.S. music labels.
Without selling the band’s soul to the devil in the way the music
was recorded and the way the band carried themselves imagewise,
Music for Nations (U.K.) and later Koch Records (U.S.) made scant
adjustments to what was recorded on It’s Only Rock n’ Roll
and repackaged the album under the Bad Sneakers And A Pina
Colada title.
For the sake of the pendulum swing, let’s just say
that Hardcore Superstar were at the top of the arc and ready to
jump as the album received notable awareness to fans around the
globe and showed great
potential.
Next came Thank You (For Letting Us Be
Ourselves) and No Regrets, which saw the band nosedive
through the swing as vocalist Jocke Berg and his mates became
wrapped up in style over substance. The band’s music melted into
territories that were perilously syrupy and overly ensconced in
glam stylings. To culminate matters, rumors circulated that the
band were finished in the summer of 2004 after guitarist Thomas
Silver and a Swedish journalist reportedly got into a fight at the
Swedish consulate in New York during a brief run of U.S. dates.
Suffice it to say, the band quelled the break-up
rumors with their recent release of Hardcore Superstar, an
album that is definitely more rock than schlock. The liner notes
list current and local Gothenburg hard rock/metal luminaries Ralf
Gyllenhammar of Mustasch and Oscar Carlquist of RAM as contributing
backing vocals on the disc, which is a pretty inspiring move, since
I’ve always maintained that Gyllenhammar packs a vocal wallop as a
modern day Glenn Danzig disciple. Pair up the bite of these two
guests in tandem with the signature Jocke Borg melodies, and the
potential for Hardcore Superstar to sound strong throughout a full
recording has never rated better.
Wasting no time in testing this theory, the first
track on the album, “Kick On The Upperclass,” proves an appropriate
opening for a couple of reasons. Namely, it shows off the band’s
new attitude while apparently gaining strength in its retribution
towards the journalistic infidel who sparked the consulate
fiasco.
The currently released singles “Wild Boys” and “We
Don’t Celebrate Sundays” champion Borg’s melodies the best while
inviting Silver and bassist Martin Sandvik to take more dominant
roles. Additionally, the gloom and doom approach to the stalled
beat on “Hateful” works wonders in adding diversity to the overall
vibe on the album. These contributions share the undeniable rock
vision the band is now following.
And those, my friends, are reasons enough for me to
claim that Hardcore Superstar is just the album to provide
the necessary adrenaline for the band to successfully ride back up
the pendulum swing. Playing to their strengths, Hardcore
Superstar is the album that should have been recorded years ago
as the follow up to Bad Sneakers And A Pina Colada and gives
hope for bigger and better things to come.
[To view streaming video of the “We Don’t Celebrate
Sundays,” click here]