Highway of Heroes

Released in October under The Sign Records - fine purveyor of Baltic pros such as Denmark's Demon Head and fellow Swede countrymen Night - is Screamer's most competent and energetic full-length to date. Blessed with the auspicious, killer title of Highway of Heroes, you can bet it ceaselessly slip slides & glides in the chill, gelid wake of past dyed in the wool "trad metal" band delicacies such as, respectively (in descending order), Hell Machine, Phoenix and Adrenaline Distractions, the more or less tepidly received lot of which rests ensconced astride several timely singles. There's also a super lowbrow and decade old, retrospective demo titled Never Going Down, a four-tiered, early montage which includes the gang's eponymous namesake track.

Hence, the hungry and salient Ljungby quintet earns its long due badges as it mellifluously lays down a whopping denary of vivacious humdingers - think vastly accessible and resilient, where their so-called "novelty" fails to wear thin, beginning with an apropos and inoffensive seventy-one second brief "Intro" at the spontaneously combustive behest of Heroic Freeway's chromatically woven opener proper, "Ride On". To Hell with its mundane and pedestrian but not so pedestrian track name; including its later "sing-along" brethren "Rider of Death", we're compelled to lean towards "equestrian"...

Flung from the hip (or horse's flank), consider it a vast, all-encompassing improvement, in every aspect, over 2017's fore-mentioned Hell Machine. (Rightly, the lone song from said third LP which sonorously glues onto the psyche is that atmospherically debonair and chic, ambergris fume strewn, pearl necklace vested, dice shaking party wrench - paired, perhaps, with classy albeit irresistibly hooking/crimson dressed rock n' roll wenches, "Monte Carlo Nights").

The twin guitars of Anton Fingal and Dejan Rosic resound in a no less rousing and poised mien susceptible to win over said not-so-despondent respondent. What's more, across the event horizon, both dexterous mystics desist in overplaying their hand, instead relying on a steadfast and sanguine formula which entails the textbook verse/verse/chorus/verse/chorus/bridge/solo/chorus/verse x2 or 3 (and so on) stance. Consider it the type responsible for making Enforcer's Death By Fire so darn listenable; that is, leisurely wound-up and intensely stimulating. Heedless, it's equally relevant to the Stockholm trailblazer's exalted but knavishly dark From Beyond, alongside, as sly bonus, Wolf's psychotic 2002 treble-charger, Black Wings. Nay, Screamer's Hero "Auto-route" mimics, in the best feasible manner, the latter's Legions of Bastards or cult favorite landmark: The Black Flame - yet, in a much less draconian i.e. chthonic and wry manner!

In other words, the guitar riffs, while inherently reverential due to elemental juxtaposition, remain catchy, stylish and grooving; their explicitly festive harmony, which yield, hand (and foot) over fist, salty & multitudinous flash-point leads, placate in a purely pentatonic, blissful fashion. Although they adopt both major and minor tendencies, algid, wintry emphasis is gamely xenogeared towards the dominant latter. As a matter of fact, said album feels and sounds precisely as expected following a quick, token glance at the ineluctably old school, "Guitar Hero meets Weird Science meets Thor" artwork rendered by Branca Studios, a swiftly blooming visual unit and source of wicked spectral histrionics, contracted by several such as Beastmaker, Church of Misery, Doom Witches, Hällas, Pentagram and Roky Erickson.

Leaner and meaner, relatively more visceral adumbrate-rs are gleaned, at the drop of a Zulu shaman's pan-cryptic gris-gris bag - since we're on the subject of friggin' pegasi (pl.) - within "Shadow Hunter" (one of the fiercer, more vociferous numbers), the proffer-ably stiff n 'corny, hand-planting, Helvetets Port-like 'Sacrifice", the double bass drum kicked, Flight reminiscent, happy-go-lucky, finger-snapping foot-tapper in "Halo" - a top shelf humdinger - and, on first listen, somewhat futuristic and ballsier, White Wizzard-ish number with "Out of the Dark". Alongside its succeeding brethren, this toothsome - perhaps, even, RAM meets Blackslash styled - ditty compels a shit ton of irrepressibly assuaging returns.

The sweetest, slickest track of all, no more than a split hair over "Shadow Hunter" and "Halo", is "Highway of Heroes" proper. To my leisurely anointed ears, this can be attributed to its anthem-ic, upbeat and pumping i.e. starkly hard-driving essence guaranteed by the just-above-mid-tempo battery works of a clearly audible and envelope pushing, exploratory bassist in Fredrik Svensson Carlström and drummer Henrik Petersson, who, incidentally, moonlights live with Night (they of "owl"ish World rafting or something other). Wrangling this cast reborn - a most laconic and smooth arraignment - is Screamer's breezily cohesive & concise front man, Andreas Wikström (ex-Cruoris/Nasheim/Stoneload). In a walnut shell, our inspired, silkily chanting genuflect-or entails the ace up Screamer's collective sleeve. Remarkably, his syncopation with the ebbing and flowing riff-work triumphs in an exuberantly stimulating, Germano-Swedish Blackslash/Flight/Helvetet's Port manner - although, without the latter's oft varying slew of acrobatically uproarious linguistic offenses.

Scarcely clocking in around thirty five minutes playing time, Highway of Heroes rests in a concomitantly anodyne (as in un-ruffling) mid-zone; that is, neither is the album too long, nor too brief. It basically triumphs from head to toe, right through its congruous and fresh countdown finales "Towers of Babylon" - unsurprisingly, a five-alive dead-ringer akin to Black Trip's ruefully sophisticated Shadowline from 2015 - and five-minute closer/longest track "Caught In Lies". This chockablock, hi-strung farrago of sizzling chops of the dual variety is much assimilated with full bore 70s heavy rock akin to Montrose, Praying Mantis or, for want of an epoch spanning as well as criminally under rated outfit, Riot (V).

(Yes, that parenthesized, finger-split and splayed "V" also "screams" "Victory"!)

Addendum: At risk of unwittingly emulating, however wryly, Alanis Morissette, muse "Isn't it ironic?" this mid-brow modern day revivalist gem was mastered in the "Temple of Disharmony Studio".