Mustasch - Testosterone

Published September 15 2015

*=Staff's pick	Yara's Song Breaking Up With Disaster The Rider* Down To Earth The Hunter Dreamers* Be Like A Man Someone* Under The Radar Testosterone

Genre	Hard Rock/Stoner Metal	Ralf Gyllenhammar	Vocals
Tracks	10	Ralf Gyllenhammar	Guitar
Running time	38 Min.	David Johannesson	Guitar
Label	GAIN Music/Sony Music	Stam Johansson-	Bass
Release	September 18, 2015	Jejo Perkovic	Drums
Country	Sweden	-	Keyboard
Producer	Rikard Löfgren
Similar artists	---

Mustasch has kind of entered a new age by letting guitarist David Johannesson, together with the album's producer Rikard Löfgren, be in charge of the songwriting for an entire release. Prior to this album, David has contributed to this process with a few songs on each of the recordings that he has participated on and lead vocalist and main man Ralf Gyllenhammar has pretty much done the rest of that important and crucial task. Ralf has probably lately figured out that change was necessary after doing most of the work for years and years and has therefore only written the lyrics to this effort.

The overall vocal melodies of the songs still have the classic Mustasch attributes with Ralf's vocals frequently being pretty much similar in tone to what he has done earlier in the band's catalogue. Meaning it's not an outstanding or perfected work, but his input is yet a vital factor to this unit's rather dirty and rough type of heavy music, and quite frankly I also think that he has stepped up a little bit in his performance this time and occasionally I wonder if he has taken some time off to visit a personal song coach to be able to come out stronger than before.

The actual music in a large number of songs is basically different from what we're used to and most of this record sounds fresh and this is undecidedly a much more diverse effort as a whole than what many of the band's past records have shown. The heavy riffs and drums and the mighty bass playing are still present in the heavier songs, but in the tranquil and mellow songs, it's mainly a different type of performance with more hooks and melodies involved in the guitar playing, which reportedly is played solely by David.

Even though the band has undergone a certain rebirth, I think that the end result is in the rough equivalent in quality with what's been offered with the band's latest releases. It's pretty good, but without finding its ways to the good old times and it definitely has its valleys and pits. I prefer in some way the more ballad-like songs, maybe because they seem more innovative or that I'm somehow not familiar to their approach. Testosterone is in the end a fairly good album, but I believe that fans to Mustasch should not expect it to be one of the band's best albums or it to be a completely new beginning after all.

Performance	Originality	Production	Vocals	Songwriting
7	5	6	6	6

Summary
6 chalices of 10 - Tobbe