Crashdiet-The Unattractive Revolution

Universal
2007



I was fairly optimistic about this CD from Sweden's Crashdiet going in and the opener "In the raw" hooked me right away. It has a bit of a Tigertailz meets early Motley Crue flavor to it with some catchy vocals and a strong overall flow. There is also a slight similarity to their fellow countrymen Loud -n-Nasty. It's a great way to begin an album and the second track "Like a sin" followed up nicely as well. It's a bit more mid-tempo, but just as striking and surprisingly smooth. At this point I was ready to think that this album was really going to be something, but I was a little premature with those thoughts. After the first two tracks the material tends to slow down some and the sparkle that they began with fades a little. The material is decent, but many of the songs fall into two categories. There are tracks that just kind of wander on without any big hooks or real direction and instead just sort of meander around for three minutes. Then there are songs that start off alright and have the huge production values that are present through this whole album. Yet they never quite live up to the sleeze glam sound that I am was hoping for as they instead settle for a Bon Jovi meets post-"Shout at the devil" era Motley Crue approach. That of course is their prerogative, but I was expecting something a little more edgy from them based on their image and the early tracks on this album. I think they showed that they can combine glam and be melodic however much of the album goes too far over to a sound that twenty years ago would have been referred to as "radio friendly". I love the vocals and I appreciate the production values yet if you smooth all the edges on this kind of music then you are left with something that's not far from ordinary pop rock and I don't think that's entirely what they had in mind. A decent album for certain, but not as good as I was hoping it turn out.

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