Sweden, a veritable hotbed of all things rock, spawned a few styles of its own, but is also very receptive to all types of music invented elsewhere, and generally capable of beating the masters at their own game. This explains
Hide the Knives, an act utterly redundant by American standards, but providing a nice counterpoint to its home scene, best known for putting a new variety of death metal on the global map. Simply put,
Savior for Sale is a rehash of the post-grunge and alternative metal sound -- not of any particular band, but of these styles in general. The vocals sound like
Kurt Cobain gone commercial, the guitars roar like
Sevendust played after midnight by a law-abiding citizen, and verses and choruses alternate in a predictable manner. Angsty lines such as "My girl, she's a honey, she's gonna dance for a lot of money" indicate that lyrical subtlety should not be expected anywhere on the album either. The record is bound to induce déjà vu-related finger-snapping at times, but this, in fact, speaks of its good qualities: tunes like this are a dime a dozen on any modern rock radio, but they only get airplay precisely because they rock, and
Savior for Sale does just that, too. The songs are full of primeval drive that is incredibly hard to resist, as it seems to work directly with the groove centers of the brain, bypassing those boring analytical facilities. This music is not essentially different from any other more established type of retro-rock, like punk, hair metal, or rockabilly, but
Hide the Knives realize the main task for retro bands -- if you don't play anything new, play catchy -- and deliver the goods in spades. ~ Alexey Eremenko