Kev Rowland
My wife often bemoans the fact I cannot remember names, birthdays, or even what she told me two minutes previously. But when it comes to music, my brain works better than any supercomputer, and when I saw this band name something clicked in the neural database, as I reviewed their debut album ‘Lint’ all the way back in 1997. At the time, the album made a huge impact on me (and many others), but I lost track of the band not long after that and was somewhat surprised to see they are still going and have now released a total of nine studio albums, as they had totally dropped off my radar. Guitarists Mats Hallstensson and Anders Lundström have been in the band since the very beginning, while this is the fourth album since Andreas Novak (vocals), Basse Blyberg (bass) and Martin Larsson (drums) joined the fold. It is as if nothing has changed, as here we have a band producing melodic hard rock of extremely high quality. Influences pop in and out, most notably Dan Reed Network, and there is even one number where they come across as a milder version of Disturbed, but HoS just keep doing what I remember them doing more than 20 years ago, namely one high quality melodic rock number packed with hooks and great vocals after another. It is polished class which the likes of grunge and extreme forms of metal tried to blast away, yet somehow, they are still here, strutting across the stage and producing an album which is sheer delight.
Harmonies abound, the guitars are just right, the production is solid with everything in just the right place, and one can only hope the move to Frontiers Music is one which is going to pay dividends. There is no doubt that the label is one of the finest in the world when it comes to this style of music, and to my ears House of Shakira perform at the very top level, so this is a match which is very welcome indeed. The band may never have really gone away, just dropped off my personal radar, but I am so very pleased indeed they are back! Awesome.