Review Summary: If rock music is where you’re at then you’ll want to check out Scandinavian rock band Velvet Insane and their recently released self titled debut album.
Velvet Insane, a Scandinavian rock band, heads into this new year with a debut album which they named after themselves. “Velvet Insane” is compilation of 10 songs recorded in Sweden during the last year. The production quality of the record is high and the collective band performances are top notch. All songs are sung in English and their music is impressively international. From a land normally associated with ice and snow this crazy little quartet has come up with some pretty hot sounds.
Traces of The Hellacopters, another Swedish band, can clearly be heard buried in Velvet Insane’s garage rock sound. While some roughness around the edges is detectable there’s enough applied polish that the final finish shines. Hey, come on now, isn’t that what commercial rock and roll is really all about at the end of the day? I, for one, believe it is indeed.
Comprised of singer, Jonas Eriksson, guitarist, Jesper Lindgren, bassist, Niklas Henriksson, and drumer, Tobias Reimbertsson, Velvet Insane’s four members mesh like a well oiled machine on overdrive. Case in point is the opening track titled “Break Out of Eden”. It leads off with a brief, galloping, solo snare drum roll which the guitarist slides into like a running sliding into home plate for the winning run of the final World Series game. Before the umpire can make the call and the fans in the stands can rise to cheer the bassist begins to form a tight little counterpoint pattern with his band mates. By the time they arrive at the eighth measure in the singer is laying down a choppy melody within the verse. The melody reaches its stride as they get to the chorus of “Break Out of Eden” and their frantic front man changes up the phrasing with some drawn out sustained syllables of each words he sings.
Next, “Velvet Insane” segues into “High on Love”, a number I’ve now begun to hear being played on local New York City radio stations. It’s a slick selection which I’m betting that once you hear it you’re going to have a really hard time getting it out of your mind. The instrumental middle section of “High on Love” is laced with some pretty sharp guitar fills that eventually yield to hand claps coupled with a static eighth-note keyboard sound that’s eerily reminiscent of The Who’s early synthesizer experiments. The chemistry you feel and hear between the musicians who make up Velvet Insane is most evident here.
Wrapping up the track list is a pensive ballad. “Six Steps Away” is the type of tune which evokes images of a band on the stage of a packed arena, winding it down and closing out the show as their adoring fans flick their Bic lighters toward the darkened night sky. The muted digital Leslie pedal sound effect adds to the poignant six-string break. As with Led Zeppelin, who was fond of doing during their longer compositions, Velvet Insane employs multiple symphonic like movements that cumulate into soaring riffs and ultimately decay into silence.
What I’ve provided here only highlights a few songs from Velvet Insane’s “Velvet Insane” album. If you’re like me you’re probably going to want to know more about these jamming up-and-comers, so you go here: https://www.facebook.com/velvetinsane/. There they provide links to their music and videos as well as updates about the group and their upcoming shows. If rock music is where you’re at then you’ll want to be where Velvet Insane is going in the future.
