it's been a bit over a year since i got kind of obsessed with the hellacopters.

obligatory 1st paragraph where i explain what the hellacopters are, which is *keyboard clacking sounds, sound of mouse clicking on wikipedia* The Hellacopters are a Swedish garage rock band that was formed in 1994 by Nicke Andersson (vocals and guitar), Andreas Tyrone "Dregen" Svensson (guitar), Kenny Håkansson (bass) and Robert Eriksson (drums). *reads some more* the hives are swedish too? the fuck? *reads some more* the hellacopters are like, really famous? that makes me feel not so cool and special for liking them. ok well anyway, i would personally call the hellacopters like, garage-ened hard rock. big and loud lackadaisical guitar licks, crashing cymbals, and a violently tinkly piano spit out familiar sounds picked from the wells of proto punk and glittery hard rock and rockabilly cliche, but they're bleached apart into something different inside a thudding, fuzzy, churning bath of sopping wet noise. each song comes out 3d printed like a mcdonalds burger to have the exact same perfectly tinny overdriven guitar tone struggling to hold back the exact same noisy racket that coincidentally slots perfectly into the hellacopters shaped hole in my brain cortex. listening to that feels like being in a warm room watching a violent storm outside lashing at your rattling windows, all the catharsis and none of the... getting soaked by rain part of this metaphor.

this is what happens when you listen to the hellacopters without the foam condoms on your 2009 apple earbuds.

like all good poetry should be, hellacopters lyrics are clever and cryptic enough to wash down the inherently distasteful and embarrassing masturbatory act of self expression, while slyly genuine enough to cut through to some real emotional muscle. i don't think the hellacopters have ever written a straightforward love song, and not even that many straightforward fuck songs, as would usually befit a hard rock band. i would say their main lyrical theme is apathy. not slacker generation type apathy that wallows in self pity and jerks off on its own intellectual superiority, nor rock god type apathy that unselfconsciously wakes up at 3 pm and fucks pussy and snorts cocaine until sunrise (i like both of these). hellacopters apathy is both, neither, and in between. it's a coolheaded bittersweet resignation, the boring everyday apathy you put on like a second set of clothes each morning to keep yourself from blowing your brains out by lunch. the hellacopters are everywhere: when you swallow the tug in your throat from an unrequited love, when you open the heavy eyelids you battle the morning before your next eight hours of work, whenever you ignore the ache in your gut and rage in your mind and hole in your heart until they go away. hellacopters apathy rolls its shoulders, pushes its shades up its nose, clicks its tongue, and says something like, cest la vie. that's how it is on this bitch of an earth. and then proceeds to kick ass. all the while, they affect a self effacing tongue in cheek kind of sleazy rock star image, which mirrors how their hard rock sound is tempered by some punk cynicism.

the hellacopters - everything's on tv / the hellacopters - hopeless case of a kid in denial

compare and contrast to two 70s songs. mc5 - the american ruse / flamin groovies - slow death

anyway, all this is preface to say that the new highly anticipated (by me (and probably some swedish people)) hellacopters album, eyes of oblivion, came out in april (yeah i've been writing this on and off since april (I'M BUSY)), their first studio album since 2008 or something, and their first return to music following a protracted hiatus. i had high expectations, especially since the first two singles they released off of it joined my top favorite tracks. it was................ ok. well, i was massively disappointed, actually.

i should quickly say before we continue that i literally don't know anything about music. hell(acopters) if i know how to play a single musical instrument. i also don't know anything about the hellacopters (the band and also the guys, each individual hellacopter). i think one of them played for entombed once? i listened to one of those albums i think. please refrain from taking anything i say remotely seriously.

this is my baking show and you're going to like it.

anyway here is my summary of the tracklist.

1. reap a hurricane - everything you could ask of an opening track. crackles to life, lances open your eyes and ears like the lightning on the cover art. andersson's voice is a little grainier with age but still the same high clarion shout that made their best albums. 5/5.
2. can it wait - short and bittersweet. a stuttering guitar and tiny beseeching chorus that doesn't overstay its welcome. 3/5.
3. so sorry i could die - this song genuinely astonished me with how much it sucked. it singlehandedly tanks the rest of the album by shitting itself and dying in the water. the chorus of the song has this gross bluesy affectation that has none of the noise and turmoil of the usual hellacopters song to cover its ugly little ass. utter horseshit. 1/5.
4. eyes of oblivion - whiplash. the title track of this album is for real one of the greatest hellacopters songs of all time. the main riff (there's always a main riff in every hellacopters song) soars and plays in a welcomingly noisy and fuzzy environ. a cozy sweater for my ears. 6/5.
5. plow and a doctor - the main riff feels like a horror punk lick for some reason, but then the pre-chorus and chorus sound like a gone rancid hellacopters 70s sound, and they mix together uncomfortably. an auditory identity crisis. 2/5.
6. positively not knowing - a faster-paced song as a welcome chaser to wash out the previous track. the guitar is a little lacking in texture on this track and it's just a little too boring overall to stand out. 3/5.
7. tin foil soldier - eugh... like a hellacopters skin stretched over a grisly sweet skeleton. by that i mean the band called sweet. i know i said the hellacopters raid old rock n' roll tropes, but this one literally feels like they copied homework off sweet and slade and picked all the wrong answers from each. i like the title a lot though. i just wish a different track had it. 2/5
8. beguiled - this pretty little gem is tragically embedded behind the carcass of so many weak songs, hard to find if the previous tracks put you to sleep already. not an anthemic stand-out like the first two singles, but really fantastic interplay between each instrument. probably some of my favorite lyrics on the album too. 4/5.
9. the pressure's on - a very hellacoptersy song, but at its most subdued and sad. slower songs like these will almost always just be time filler to me. once again, just not that interesting. 3/5.
10. try me tonight - a weird bid to bring the energy back up for the last track. an old shitty horse starts picking up the pace once it sees its stable on the way home and so does this album. it's a little boring but the effort is nice. if i'm totally honest, i'd give this a 3/5 in like any other context but i've been stockholm(sweden)'d by the genuinely bad songs on this album and appreciate it for being just kind of a boring end track instead of genuinely bad. 4/5.

this album sounds like a parody of a better album; the mid-to-goodish songs on this album could be the weakest songs on any other hellacopters album. but what really changed? was their sound really so different on this album than previous ones? that is literally how much this album disappointed me: it is genuinely making me question my enjoyment of every preceding one. scouring online and reading reviews for this album to see if anyone else felt the same made me feel like i was in the twilight zone. no one seemed to think that this album was much of a departure at all from previous ones.

so i went back to listen to the hellacopters beginnings. the first few hellacopters albums, supershitty to the max and payin the dues are genuine garage rock that some glam inspiration breathed on; early gg allin with more piano, or new york dolls with more drums. but in 1999 with grande rock, the balance inverted. their 21st century releases have had a solidly consistent rock voice since, orphaning the sound of their first two. (the first two albums are banished from spotify, a la pantera's glam metal era). i believe eyes of oblivion is the terminal end state. a dead star, the temperature of warm coffee. still technically hellacopters but with all the punk energy that they once had sublimated into nothing. maybe it is the natural tendency, or even inevitable fate, of most heavy or abrasive bands to have their edges sanded down to nothing in the rock tumbler of combined age and success. they've outgrown those trappings, and society has outgrown them.

what does that mean, though, that the production sounds cleaner but it makes the music sound worse? does that reveal that the structure underneath has always been weak? i dunno. i don't think so. you know that brian eno quote, right.

"Whatever you now find weird, ugly, uncomfortable and nasty about a new medium will surely become its signature. CD distortion, the jitteriness of digital video, the crap sound of 8-bit - all of these will be cherished and emulated as soon as they can be avoided. it's the sound of failure: so much modern art is the sound of things going out of control, of a medium pushing to its limits and breaking apart. The distorted guitar sound is the sound of something too loud for the medium supposed to carry it. The blues singer with the cracked voice is the sound of an emotional cry too powerful for the throat that releases it. The excitement of grainy film, of bleached-out black and white, is the excitement of witnessing events too momentous for the medium assigned to record them."

a little mystery, jagged edges, shittiness, isn't necessarily a detractor or even an enhancer to art or music or whatever but may instead be an integral part of its character.

if i wanted to this would be the part where i make up some philosophical bullshit to connect to all this. but i don't, so, bye.

tl;dr album bad, i sadge.

- danny