Sounds From The Junkshop #51 - The Hellacopters

 

"And I'm older but I sure ain't as wise..." - The Hellacopters - Hopeless Case Of A Kid In Denial

It seems apt that we're covering the Hellacopters on Sounds From The Junkshop a week after we dealt with the Backyard Babies as the two are pretty heavily linked. Like the Backyards, I'm pretty sure it was through the Wildhearts that I got into the Hellacopters way back in the day, specifically through Ginger and 'copters frontman Nicke Andersson (aka Nick Royale) collaborating on the Super$hit666 side project in the late '90s. Andersson had formed the band in his native Sweden in the early '90s after starting out as drummer with doom metallers Entombed (talk about a career 180!) and the initial line-up also featured future Backyard Babies guitarist Dregen but by the time I discovered 'em they were well into their career and had just been signed to a major label for the High Visibility album. A few of their songs from prior to this era did surface on some of the cool rock 'n' roll compilations I heard on labels like Infernal around this time (The Devil Stole The Beat From The Lord and Venus In Force I remember cropping up in this way) but I'm gonna have to plead semi-ignorance as it wasn't until many years later that I started to check those albums out properly.

Anyway, I remember being properly blown away by High Visibility - it was like a pure adrenalin shot of garage rock 'n' roll a good two or three years before the Strokes et al made the genre fashionable again with the likes of killer lead-off track Hopeless Case Of A Kid In Denial (with its immortal line "You like the Fabs, I like the Who, you eat tikka I eat vindaloo") and Baby Borderline being tight, mean and streamlined to hit you with full force. Great stuff.

Disappointingly I never saw the band live - I think they might have come over to do a couple of London gigs during these years but they certainly never played anywhere near where I lived - certainly if an opportunity comes along to change that then I fully intend on grabbing it. But the tracks on High Visibility quickly became regular fixtures on both my stereo and my radio show back in this era.

By the time of the group's next album, 2002's By The Grace Of God, the world was starting to get a bit more hip to them - having a shout-out from fellow countrymen the Hives who'd just made their chart breakthrough at the time can't have hurt. It was another storming effort with the title track being another one which I played a lot during that year along with the other great bands who'd snuck through the wall in the wake of the Strokes and the White Stripes making their breakthrough like the D4, the Donnas, Danko Jones, Gluecifer, the Von Bondies etc. The difference was that there was a much more authentic feel to bands like these than groups like the aforementioned Strokes who you couldn't help but feel had essentially had a lot of their breaks handed to them on a plate without having to work especially hard for them. I know I sound like I'm splitting hairs here but I've always said that like it or not there's a big difference between the genuine bad-ass outlaws from the wrong side of the tracks like the Hellacopters and the little trust fund rich boys playing at garage rockers like Julian Casablancas et al in terms of the feel of the music. I dunno what it is but it's definitely there - in the immortal words of Rose Tattoo, "Nice boys don't play rock 'n' roll"

For some reason I completely missed the group's next album Rock 'n' Roll Is Dead (I'm not sure if it even got a UK release, then again it did come out in 2005 when...well, let's just say I wasn't really aware of a lot of things that year for various reasons and just leave it at that) and never bothered to check out their covers album swansong Head Off. I guess I must've kind of just drifted away from them a bit but I honestly can't think why. Weird.

After the split, Royale would link up with Dolf from the Datsuns to form Imperial State Electric who had a red hot run of albums through the 2010's with 2015's Honk Machine and 2016's All Through The Night being particular highlights. However, the end of the decade would see the Hellacopters reform and hopefully some new material will be forthcoming. As will an opportunity for this writer to finally see 'em live after all these years! Anyway, if you're unlucky enough not to have got acquainted with the Hellacopters' music yet then I heartily recommend High Visibility and By The Grace of God as well as their three indie releases from before then (Supershitty To The Max, Payin' The Dues and Grande Rock). For pure simple no frills rock 'n' roll to bang your head to, it doesn't come much better than this.