A couple of years ago Johan (singing and dancing), Erik (guitars), Stefan (drums) and Erik (bass) realized that music wasn’t fun anymore. So they started The Fix.

I may sound a little backwards, but I guess it was about getting back to the very reason they started playing music: to have fun with music, no more no less. And maybe about not taking oneself too seriously.

And sure it feels like they’re having fun, both in their online adventures and in their music, now represented with the EP “The Great Epic Tease”, a predecessor to the upcoming album to be released in Fall.

It’s party rock with energy, some Red Hot Chile Peppers, a pinch of Foo Fighters, catchy choruses with drive and good melodies. If you’d like to continue to consider the question “Do You Need The Fix?” after this post, you can visit their site, Facebook page, and listen on Spotify or on Youtube.

DCAL
How You Doing?

Niels Nielsen released the album “”Welcome To The Promising Land of Hi5ers and Hopeless People” earlier this year. A rather dark album, which at first was hard to get into, but after giving it som more attention a very special album and artist appeared in front of me.

He moves somewhere in between Radiohead’s experimenting disted world and Beck’s lo-fi-acoustic work. Mixing dark disorted tracks with electronica and acoustic songs. Quite unique to my ears and varied.

Listen on Spotify and visit his site.

Crawling Home
The Birds

BST, hailing from Växjö, consists of four young men, and last year they won the national competition Musik Direkt in Sweden. With Oskar Jacobssons nice vocals in the front, they create a tasteful hard rock, a hard rock that I would like to place in the vicinity of the glam rock quarters of the eighties, just before it became more glam than rock. Add then a dose of blues vibes and some other influences.

You can find BST on Myspace and you can listen more on Spotify, on Grooveshark and other platforms.

Hush
Liquid Silk

Wraptors say that they don’t follow any rules. Of course that’s impossible, which they realize themselves as they add: “Well…maybe a few. But not on purpose…”

When I listen I’m beginning to understand what they mean. The sound in itself is not the odd thing about them, neither the riffs, but the songs, the melodies, the harmonies and how all this is arranged. In a way it feels like a post grunge rocker has joined a couple of progressive rockers, a Zappa fan and a metal guitarist, but they twist it, making it hard to make any direct genre-comparisons, even if I somewhere hear the influences.

Many times it feels kind of backwards, and sometimes when I think I just have gotten into a chord-melody sequence that feels “normal”, they make a hard turn and lure me away.

It’s their album “Held High” I’m listening to, a challenging album that requires attention and quite a few listens. I like challenges and I also liked this album, which was both fun and interesting to listen to. And I’m starting to get a hang of it now…

The albumet “Held High” is available on Spotify (and other services) and you can find Wraptors on Facebook.

Stoked On Stakes
To Beat a Beast

The band Alex Carole and the Crush, hailing from Fagersta, was formed in 2009 at the initiative of the singer and guitarist Anders Pietsch, aka Alex Carole. The members came from bands like CDOASS, Bruket and The Savages.

In April they released their debut album “Vol 1.”, an album full of nice, messy  rock’n’roll, sometimes with vibes from The Clash, sometimes from more contemporary indie rock.

Listen to the albumet on Spotify and follow the band at their site.

Will I Get It?
And Know About Me