The Carburetors
Loud Enough To Raise The Dead
(FF039)

Fast forward rock’n roll and pedal to the metal!? Hm...I don’t know... The first album from these five rockers sure was a blast, throwing out riffs and catchy frases like ricebags from a Red Cross-truck in a humanitary disaster. This time it seems like some of the fast forward approach is lost, maybe because of too much metal and too little pedal. By all means; this is a great album. The Carburetors really deliver what you expect them to; roaring vocals, one-phrase-choruses and big, fat guitars. When that is said I get the feeling that the straight forward rock’n roll tunes we know them for, have suffered from an attempt to make a different, more complicated record than the debut “Pain is temporary – Glory is forever”. Half of the boogie-stuff has been replaced by mean metal-riffs, and the ultimate guitar-hero is no longer Chuck Berry, but Steve Vai or Eddie Van Halen. Personally I think it’s way too much unmotivated guitar-masturbation on this record. But to quote a line I once heard; masturbation CAN be fun. Unmotivated masturbation, on the other hand, gives you no pleasure what so ever, and you only end up tired and bleeding. This is how I feel about this album as well. A lot of it is good, good earcandy. Songs like “Rock’n roll forever”, “Whole town is shakin” and “Rock’n roll is king” with it’s WigWam-ish ‘na-na-na’-chorus, are all winners when you sit down with a six-pack of beers and a handful of good friends. But then you still got the feeling that something is missing, or that there’s too much of something else. I’ve listen to this album for a while now, and it’s getting better by the day, but as I listen to it, I’m still haunted by they same questions I asked the first time I heard it; why did they put that in there? Why did they do like that? But hey; why spend too much time trying to understand rock’n roll? – Just go with it! This record has almost only good songs, but if The Carburetors haven’t tried so hard to re-invent them selves; this album would have been nothing but fast forward rock’n roll from here to eternity! See ya all by the six-pack!

www.thecarburetors.com/