Black Trip - Goin' Under

Published November 23 2013

*=Staff's pick	Voodoo Queen* Radar* Putting Out The Fire No Tomorrow Tvár Dábla* The Bells Thirst Goin' Under

Genre	Hard Rock	Joseph Tholl	Vocals
Tracks	8	Peter Stjärnvind	Guitar
Running time	35 Min.	Sebastian Ramstedt	Guitar
Label	Threeman Recordings	Johan Bergebäck	Bass
Release	23 October 2013	Jonas Wikstrand	Drums
Country	Sweden	-	Keyboard
Producer	Fred Estby, Dolf De Borst
Similar artists	---

Black Trip equals five Swedish musicians, hailing from fairly known bands, that have come together to create a piece of guitar based retro seventies and early eighties hard rock. With influences from giants like Black Sabbath, early Kiss, early Iron Maiden, and a few more, the band has created an album strong enough to compete on a small level with at least some of that time's finest.

I rarely find myself over-excited by retro stuff and I tend to give these albums just one or two shots before laying them to rest. With Black Trip I found something different and successful though, even if they have borrowed or perhaps stolen a good chunk of its presented material. Don't get me wrong, the actual songs are brand new and haven't been reconstructed from the past. It's more that they have caught major parts of the essence of the period with the awesome production that sounds old as hell, yet with a fresh glow that shows a deft operation.

With Joseph Tholl, who occasionally sounds like actor Bob Goldthwait in the Police Academy movies, the impact hits even harder. He finds ways to reproduce the vocal style so distinct that his shortages become benefits. The band has chosen to produce a shorter album that features double guitars who complete each other in conformity of time. Many albums I listen to nowadays consists repeated walls of sound, but with Goin' Under I find peacefulness to listen to each instrument effortlessly. More isn't always better and even after over twenty spins I don't find myself in a state of saturation.

The hardest thing with this review has been to rate Originality below. In these days it's a 9, but considering how influenced they are by certain elements, my thoughts head towards a 1, so I decided to chicken out and go in between these numbers to a modest 5. This is definitely an exciting and fascinating debut from Black Trip, although the roster tells us that these guys aren't new to the block.