Artist: Rise and Shine
Title: Empty Hand
Type: Album
Label: I Hate

Year in and year out, there are more and more subsets of metal, be they speed, black, death, stoner, thrash, groove, or any of a hundred variations. So, at least by defining themselves as Flower Power Metal (nope, I’d not heard that one before either) shows a sense of humour and self awareness on the part of Sweden’s Rise and Shine. Relatively unknown outside their native land, a country with a small population about on a par with London, whose only industries can surely be nothing more then oddly named flat pack furniture and music, ‘Empty Hand’ is the latest album by a band who’ve been going since the early nineties, with fluctuating line ups and various labels. The one constant of the band is front woman Josabeth Leidi, her vocals giving a distinctive stand out identity to the band.

So, what kind of music is Flower Power Metal then? On cranking up the CD it’s obvious that Rise and Shine have a heavy stoner and psychedelic influence, early Sabbath riffs dominating, backed up by a solid bass line and occasionally jazzy drums. Album opener and title track ‘Empty Hand’ powers out with an almost Zeppelinesque guitar, backed by tight drums and bass before Leidi’s voice blasts out, a combination of the vocal passion and histrionics of Janis Joplin mixed with the deep delivery of Grace Slick circa ‘White Rabbit’. Throughout the whole five minutes and twenty two seconds of that first number, the instruments lay down a laid back tribute to the heyday of seventies rock, creating an audio image of bell bottoms, lava lamps, and tie dyed t-shirts, a deceptively gentle counterpoint to the bombast of the lyrics. This same combination of pounding psychedelic rock carries on into follow up ‘Empty Words’, the blasting chords and thumping drums dragging the album back in time to the days when Pink Floyd was new and anti-establishment, and Jimi Hendrix was more then just a face on a student poster and a riff to steal for a jeans advert.

Expertly played acid rock fills the whole album, the guitars building up to match the epic delivery of Josabeth Leidi’s startlingly powerful voice. The only slight marring note, to my ear, is the number ‘Dirty Tricks’ where her delivery sounds over busy compared to the single, gently strummed acoustic guitar. It is on the all out rock numbers that her sound delivers, even the comparatively simple ‘Another Troubled Mind’, a composition that could easily disappear into Bon Jovi territory tedium if it weren’t for her voice raising it to a whole new level.

Rise and Shine was a band I hadn’t heard of before, but now I’m damn glad that I have. Should they ever announce a UK show, I know I’ll be fighting to get there to make sure those vocal fireworks deliver as spectacularly live as they do on this CD. Something tells me from the absolute raw power they are real, and not the product of an autotune!

http://www.myspace.com/flowerpowermetal

Spenny Bullen

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