Respect the Rock<\/a>
\n<\/i> had on exposing the bands in their native homelands in Europe.
\nBrisk sales resulted with the subsequent releases of the
\nHellacopters breakthrough album
\nPayin’ the Dues<\/i> and Gluecifer’s first full-length album,
\npatriotically referencing their hometown of Oslo, Norway with the
\ntitle
\nRidin’ the Tiger<\/i>.<\/p>\nAnd as the story goes, it took an indie label like Man’s Ruin to
\ntake the plunge on bringing these two acts to U.S. soil. What
\nresulted should easily illustrate examples of what a label can do
\nright and what a label can do wrong in trying to payoff on such a
\ngamble.<\/p>\n
First, I’ll applaud Man’s Ruin for actually trying to take a
\ngreat idea from White Jazz Records and attempting to make it
\nbetter. Seriously, rock n’ roll and pompous mission statement
\nassociations are cool even if it’s to augment a marketing strategy.
\nAnd yes, as an avid student of European action rock, I’m going to
\npraise the label for choosing the two most talented and interesting
\nbands coming out of the Northern European scene at the time.
\nSomething tells me that if this had been a major label enterprise,
\nwe’d be talking about Ace of Base and the Cardigans, but I
\napologetically digress\u2026<\/p>\n
Sadly though, when describing the tracks on the album, I have to
\ngive a failing grade to Man’s Ruin for allowing the Hellacopters to
\nrecord four crappy cover songs to supplement their one original
\ntune on the album. Covering Wilson Pickett’s “A Man and a Half” and
\nBob Seger’s “Her Strut” are as much bad ideas today as they were
\neven worse ideas when the original artists first recorded them.
\nSure, the title of the album tells us to respect the rock, but give
\nme Ted Nugent or Allman Brothers songs to revere. Hell, I’d even
\ntake a cover of Aretha Franklin’s “R-E-S-P-E-C-T” over those two
\nsongs.<\/p>\n
Listen to the Hellacopters perform their lone original “Doggone
\nYour Bad Luck Soul” and you’ll find yourself wondering why Man’s
\nRuin let the Hellacopters record the covers in the first place.
\nSplit tempos set to equal parts of blues and wah-wah are far more
\ninteresting than the likely boring first impressions that the
\nHellacopters granted first-time U.S. listeners with the other
\ntracks performed on the album.<\/p>\n
But alas, this is a split effort for which we should all be
\nextremely thankful.<\/p>\n
If music industry wisdom is to put the best songs at the top of
\nthe track listing then Man’s Ruin failed again and that’s a shame.
\nGluecifer wins the battle of the two bands on this album hands
\ndown.<\/p>\n
Gluecifer rocks and Gluecifer roars much like that tiger I was
\ndescribing earlier with their tracks “Gary O’ Kane” and “Shitty
\nCity.” Listening to “Gary O’Kane,” I get a certain impression that
\nBiff Malibu is singing about the days when he used to put “a boot
\nin the ass” of a guy he describes as the “king of lame – a no-good
\ndoofus with an idiot name.” Likewise, “Shitty City” is a song that
\nwould seemingly describe Gluecifer’s distaste for their hometown of
\nOslo. Even if they are not being serious with their chants of
\nwanting to see the city burn, the big guitars, wailing vocals, and
\nvicious backbeats that are kicked out during this jam impressively
\nhide any sentiment one would normally sympathize with such a
\nhappening.<\/p>\n
Anger management classes can wait as Gluecifer figure out how to
\nconvincingly pen a song with the title “My Card Says Typhoon
\nKiller.” It doesn’t take much imagination to realize this isn’t a
\nballad we’re talking about here. The last two tracks, “No Goddamn
\nPhones” and the cover of the Backstreet Girls (yes, that’s right)
\n“Going Down” pack the finishing wallops of the Gluecifer set; a
\nquintet of tracks that may end up going down in history as some of
\nthe best-arranged songs the band has ever put out to date on one
\nrelease.<\/p>\n
Looking back, Man’s Ruin definitely had the right idea for
\nputting out this release in an attempt to jump start the
\nScandinavian scene on North American soil. What they lacked was the
\nability to balance the output of both bands efforts as much as they
\nfeatured the wrong band at the top of this billing. With a title
\nlike
\nRespect the Rock America<\/i>, it’s understandable how the
\npreviously uninitiated will remain uninitiated to what should have
\nbeen.<\/p>\n
Gluecifer Grade: A The Hellacopters Grade: D+ Man’s
\nRuin Grade: D (for as much stupidity as anything else)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":26527,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[6940],"rating":[5614],"class_list":["post-37766","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-the-hellacopters-gluecifer","rating-rating-c-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/37766","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37766"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/37766\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52136,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/37766\/revisions\/52136"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26527"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37766"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=37766"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=37766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}