When two front figures, from two great bands I’ve presented before, decide to form a new band together, I get curious of course. It’s Joel Segerstedt from The Open Up and Bleeds and  Makkan Johansson from Saigon Sickness, who have started the band Hjärtattack (“Heart attack”) and have released a first single before the album debut later this year.

With Hjärtattack they return to their roots in punk rock, where they once started. The band name Hjärtattack was also the name om the first punk band Joel started, 13 years old. It’s clenched fists, bitterness and anger over injustice, hard lyrics and straight punk riffs. As a first taste they released the song “Överklassafari” (“Upper Class Safari”), where the title (I assume) is taken from campaigns at the start of this year, where bus trips in Stockholm and Göteborg out to expensive residential areas was organised, as some kind of sightseeing among the  upper class houses there.

Listen more to Hjärtattack on Bandcamp and follow them on Facebook.

Överklassafari

In November I wrote about The Open Up and Bleeds. Their debut album is now recorded and ready for launch, but so far there’s no date set for the release.

Of course you get a better view of a band when you can listen to an entire album, but it’s a little hard anyway to catch The Open Up and Bleeds. Makes it even more interesting for me, as I’m served a lot of variation from dirty, messy rock with a heavy drive in high speed, to slower, more tense and dark songs.

It’s The Stooges, Neil Young-rock, a rawer This Perfect Day and maybe some early The Cure too. As I said, it’s not available yet, but I really hope it will be soon. Meanwhile you can visit the band on their Myspace page and on Facebook. Here’s a song and also a video from the album:

This Noise

OK Is Not OK:

Others about The Open Up and Bleeds: Absolut Noise, Buck Theorem’s Hide-out

Earlier this year The Open Up and Bleeds released the singel “Stiv Bators In All of Us”. This was a first step on their way to their debut album which is due soon. And the song just hit me directly in my chest. Straight on, no complications, pure rock’n’roll and raw guitars. Could it get any better?

Other tracks runs off in other directions, even though the core of it all remains the same. Sometimes the synths make their entrance and it becomes more of New Wave with a punkish attitude. There’s a nice raw sound in their music, which is strengthened even more by  Joel Segerstedt’s really cool vocals.

I’m looking forward to their album, and meanwhile we can listen to a bunch of tracks on The Open Up and Bleeds’ Myspace page. The singel, “Stiv Bators In All of Us” together with two bonus tracks, is available for download on Sounds of Zilence’ site.

Here’s the video to “Stiv Bators In All of Us”, and two songs to listen to and download; the singel song and the excellent bonus song “It Takes a Band”:

Stiv Bators In All of Us:

Stiv Bators In All of Us
It Takes a Band