The Hellacopters – "Overdriver"

"It's called writing a goddamn song"

Apart from a coupla other tracks than ferocious opener "Gotta Get Some Action Now" off their '96 debut LP "Supershitty to the Max", I could name you ONE song by The Hellacopters: "Hopeless Case of a Kid in Denial". Which… yeah, I don't even know what album that one's on.

Hereby in no way suggested that Hellacopters are a subpar band. Not by a long shot. It's just… I've listened to most of their albums several times, and as much as their mode of expression is a welcome addition to our collective pool of music, the group's songs just haven't stuck with me.

This is also how I felt upon the first spin of their latest effort "Overdriver". However, upon the second one, things started opening up. And I'm getting a bad feeling that I might have been approaching the group wrongly.

See, what we're dealing with here is Rock. And while normally, I gnash my teeth whenever some clueless newbie spells genre terms with capital initial letters, nothing less suffices in this particular regard.

Opener "Token Apologies" is pure analogue rock'n'roll, its fiery lead guitar virtually smelling like heated Orange amplifiers, and the melody echoing this one little group, name of Creedence Clearwater Revival. Along with the agitated uptempo of "Faraway Looks" and the punky "Wrong Face On", this is not only vintage-Hellacopters – it's vintage Rock. (See, with that initial capital letter and italic stylization again.)

The more I contemplate a fine collection of songs like this one, the more I feel like revisiting The Hellacopters' back catalogue and peruse the band's older songs a little closer.

Maybe I've been expecting something more from the group. And granted, if you know your way around the wonderful world of rock music, an album like "Overdriver" – just like any other Hellacopters album – will hold little to no surprise whatsoever. Ambition is not the key word here.

But in a world where music sounds more and more like it's made by entering one-sentence queries into an AI and then polished and auto-tuned into inhuman joylessness, "Overdriver" is all the more of a pleasure. Because while ambition may not be The Hellacopters' prime motivator, the group does this one other little thing that you couldn't force outta any so-called "artist" that gets played in contemporary night clubs if their lives depended on it. And that one little thing is called writing a goddamn song.

Indeed, the melodic "(I Don't Wanna Be) Just a Memory" has an unmistakable Beatles-esque flavor to it from the beginning, culminating in a chorus of equal parts fist-pumping snare drum, equal parts singability power á la Slade and Sweet. The dramatic Minor-key "Don't Let Me Bring You Down" sounds like the more melancholic side of 70's Kansas or Fleetwood Mac. And the cadence, theme, and melody in "Do You Feel Normal?" could all very well have been written by this one little singer-songwriter, name of Bruce fucking Springsteen.

Now, unless you wouldn't know a good song if it gave you tinnitus, you will likely know that aforementioned artists – apart from all being represented in the vinyl collection of any dad who knows what the Hell he's doing – share primarily the trait of being hella accomplished songwriters. And the more I contemplate a fine collection of songs like this one, the more I feel like revisiting The Hellacopters' back catalogue and peruse the band's older songs a little closer.

This is virile, life-affirming sonic energy expressed by actual human beings on actual musical instruments. And for all that's good and great in the world, it must stay alive.

One arguably weak link is that Nicke Andersson's hoarse vocals, while fitting the group's garage-y intonation, don't exactly hold a lot of personality. Unlike, say, with the velvety baritone of a Jim Morrison or the off-key nasal sneer of an Alice Cooper, this coulda been sung by pretty much anyone. Which is a bit of a shame, because given a charismatic frontman, The Hellacopters might have stirred up some more attention around themselves.

Another thing is that while solid, aforementioned lack of ambition keeps an album like this from soaring as it may could have. The slow Minor-key waltz of penultimate tune "The Stench" is sonically the farthest removed from the band's dealings otherwise, hence making for the album's most interesting track in all its smoky pathos and gravitas. Otherwise, things are kinda homogenous, and not without a coupla expendable cuts.

However, and in this day and age not the least, we should treasure an LP like this one. What "Overdriver" may lack in innovation, it more than makes up for in pure, honorable honesty and tangibility. This is not just any kind of music; this is Rock. Put another way, this is virile, life-affirming sonic energy expressed by actual human beings on actual musical instruments. And for all that's good and great in the world, it must stay alive.

Rating: 4.5 out of 6

Genre: Hard rock / just plain ol' Rock with a capital R
Release date: 31/1/2025
Label: Nuclear Blast
Producer: Nicke Andersson