Boasting a killer production, the Major Leiden studio team percolate new Finnish band,
Whiteflame's heavy, eighties' flavoured hard rock debut 'Yesterday's News' through an assortment of contemporary filters, from techno to sleaze, from lo-fi to the highest of hi-fis.
The album is so well constructed. Every nut and bolt is screwed in tight at just the right pinch point, torqued up for maximum effect. It's built on a solid framework of robust riffs and wiry melodies that Vince the vocalist stretches and bends to suit the mood and the moment.
Constantly striving to be innovative, it precision machines songs like
'Gun', the best song Aerosmith never wrote, delivering a combustible, slickly oiled product in the process. Or it takes the highly entertaining
'Swimsuit Centerfold', roots it in Tesla-like, in-your-face hard rock before suddenly spiralling up into Cinderella-esque pop metal pouting. Great stuff.
Elsewhere, the band's sleeves are writ large with their influences. It's therefore good to see that both they and the production team have the wit and imagination successfully - for the most part - to reshape the source material into something new and interesting.
Launched by a spare, crunching riff,
'Rock Hard' takes the
Backyard Babies and
Motley Crue as its reference points. A matter of yesterday's and today's sleaze rock meeting head on, with plenty of attitude.
'Miss U' strives hard to reach the heights of Axel Rose's soft centred balladry with Guns'n'Roses circa 'Use Your Illusion' and gets damn close while
'Down' pays its respect to
Thin Lizzy with another outstanding, tuneful hard rock workout.
It would be easy for a band to lose their identity, disguised by all these derivatives, but
Whiteflame emerge as a hard rockin' band with impeccable taste, one with the inventiveness and songwriting skill to forge their own future. One to watch.
Written by
Brian Monday, January 5, 2009
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