Poisonblack

Drive

Drive   is the fifth album of the Finnish band   Poisonblack. The CD will be out through Hype Records on April 27th in Scandinavia. (and through Cargo Records on September 23rd in Germany)


There are some albums you wait for with especial eagerness. That happened to me with   Drive   because the previous CD   Of Rust And Bones   (2010) couldn't fully convince.   Mercury Falling, the first (digital) single off of the album   Drive   crashes out of the speakers into your ears and leaves a strong impression. A promising sign! Now I start listening to the album, the first note drops, then the party starts with   Piston Head. Less than 45 minutes later I knew that all my hopes for a top-notch album have been fulfilled. The quartet around mastermind Ville Laihiala just blew me away with those ten new tracks!


Off you go, with an album full of varieties, with a really good mixture of hard, noisy, guitar dominated rock in different styles but also a little bit of blues, a slight touch of boogie and slower spine-tingling stuff. The structure of some songs is very interesting. I love the surprising moments, especially when parts or tempo changes appear where you wouldn't expect to find them. All tracks have one thing in common: all are catchy songs without getting boring, even after the third repetition. Producer Tue Madsen and the four   Poisonblacks   did an excellent job. And, imho, they did it with a lot of love and passion for rock music.


On this album Ville's going strong and knocking my socks off. He uses his voice appropriately in any given style, mostly with a slightly rough and throaty voice - but his vocal cords are able to produce more than this: to sing soft and full of emotions. And the guitars, yeah, the guitars - noisy, rumbling, long guitar parts, great riffs and a lot of good solos. His activity as singer and guitarist is an absolute highlight for me. The rhythm-duo consisting of drummer Tarmo Kanerva and bassist Antti Remes did such an exciting job - wow! And I really like the bass lines. They are present all the time, grooving, but also have their special little moments in songs like e.g.   Sycophant. Keyboarder Marco Sneck sounds restrained and hushed but that perfectly fits in - and when he starts to play piano at   From Now Here To Nowhere... that's great!


My faves (it was a painful decision) are three songs that caught me at the first go:

From Now Here To Nowhere   -   a slower and spine-tingling track. Ville's voice sound pure and clear at the beginning, so soft and full of emotions, supported by feathery guitars and a piano, the powerful refrain comes along with decent female choral singing. Six great and special minutes.

A Good Day For The Crows   -   this song starts off with nice guitars, great rhythm, a slight touch of boogie, bluesy guitar solo in the middle, surrounded by hard rock - what a mixture! A fast song with that special something - ingeniously performed!

Sycophant   -   this song rocks right from the very first second, the bass lines are brilliant! Great guitar solos and again that rhythm that catches and transforms me into a nodding dog ;-)


There's one thing I don't like > there are only ten songs on that album. It would have been great to have more of that cool stuff, but this doesn't affect the overall score in any way 'cause I love each song. Albums that wows me from the very first start to the very end are rare, so, here's my rating>
 

Rating:

7 out of 7 Ankhs

Marion Ney / Sarkophag Rocks
05.04.2011


Translation by Susanne Blum
 

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