Album Review: Hardcore Superstar - "Abrakadabra"

 

Hardcore Superstar were the perennial nearly-men of the mid-noughties Scandinavian rock explosion. Lacking the scuzzy cool of the Backyard Babies or the garage rock fire of the Hellacopters or the Hives, they were a solid workmanlike sleaze rock band who seemed to be forever destined to be the genre's almost-weres.

However, this theory does the band a disservice - they've hung in and outlasted nearly all of their contemporaries and Abrakadabra is no less than their twelfth album. It's pretty clear as soon as the opening title kicks in with its spiralling Love Gun style riff and having the sheer dumb guts to rhyme "She's a real puff adder" with "I forgot how I met her". It ain't big and it ain't clever but it'll definitely put a smile on your face and isn't that exactly what sleaze rock's supposed to do?

And thus it continues - the influences here certainly aren't anything you wouldn't expect with echoes of the Cult, Thin Lizzy, Skid Row, Whitesnake, latter day Alice Cooper and Twisted Sister during the 40 minutes of the album with the only real nod to modern times being the attack on Youtube pseudo-celebs that is Influencer. But the key is that if anything Hardcore Superstar seem to have actually got better with age - songs like Weep When You Die and Give Me A Smile (which has an odd resemblance to the old Rocket From The Crypt number On A Rope) could have been genetically engineered to headbang to and raise your fist and yell along to. It isn't quite all plain sailing with the odd track like Dreams In Red and the acoustic closer Fighter slipping into anonymity a bit but put it this way, if this had been a new Backyards album then I'd probably be calling it their best since Making Enemies Is Good.

Hardcore Superstar are very much sticking to what they know best on this album but as I've often noted in Nite Songs over the last few years, sometimes there's an argument that if the formula ain't broke then don't fix it and on this evidence, the formula is very much still working. For old school rock thrills, this is definitely one of the better albums I've heard this year.

NITE SONGS RATING: 🌔🌔🌔🌔🌔🌔🌔🌔🌑🌑 (8/10)