The rock and roll dream hasn't exactly met expectations for Sweden's Hellacopters, although that doesn't stop them from proclaiming rock defunct in the title of their 10th album. But how's this for sad irony-- back when everyone was lamenting grunge or lionizing indie slacker rock, these guys had the chutzpah to reintroduce 70s AOR. Now the Darkness-led cadre of retro-revivers receive the accolades for their supposed trailblazing, though in all fairness, Hellacopters lack more than just opportunistic timing in their Sisyphusian task to co-opt arena rock to stardom.
Armed with the unflagging, soaring vocals of Nicke Andersson and a willingness to cram a half-dozen virile riffs into one cramped downbeat, the band smugly recaptures their desired aesthetic and too often quits there. Rock & Roll only confirms this already steadfast claim, showing little to no evolution in the band's material save for perhaps a slightly larger ratio of slowed-down, fake Allman Brothers songs to cocksure rockers. If you're a lock-and-load, full-throttle rock fan though, this album's got your order. Masturbatory guitar solos, cowbells, the same damn bridge to every song-- check your highfalutin songwriting at the door, son, this ain't thinkin' man's music.
Of course, we all need to numb our minds sometimes, and standout tracks (in a liberal sense of the term) "Monkeyboy" and "Everything's on TV" do that trick nicely. The former notches most of the hooks on an otherwise barren album, almost poppy enough to resemble GBV at their most muscular but instead settling for mediocre Springsteen mimicry. A few eons devolved, "Everything's on TV" flashes a sanctimonious sneer at prodigal viewers ("I have a TV screen of some 32 inches/ TV dinner and an easy chair") and resounds about as strongly as the line "Well I burned all my books/ On my ass I sit and look".
Unfortunately, more than a decade of fist-pumping hasn't garnered much tooth for the band. Opener "Before the Fall" sounds as over-the-top plastic as Marty McFly's rendition of "Johnny B. Goode" in Back to the Future while "soulful" americana ballads like "Leave It Alone" are on a Black Crowes level. The precarious divide in revivalist rock today is almost residual of Hellacopters' on/off material. For every Darkness or Hives, we get 10 Jets, and the 'copters canon uncannily reflects this. At this point, I'm convinced the band's trapped in some sort of horrible Groundhog Day-like time trap, churning out the same fodder until 20 albums later maybe, just maybe, they'll reach the year 1977.
