Foobar Your Fiend, My Friend
by Alissa Ordabai
Staff Writer
Killer riffs, in-your-face vocals and lewd grooves pulsating in unison with your heartbeat is how this Swedish quartet open their sophomore effort. The best tracks on this record are simple, clear-cut and utterly irresistible, but when it comes to filler numbers, simplicity turns into monotony and clarity into banality, making you wish Foobar have made this release an EP after all.
The band’s saving grace is their inspired groove-spinning which saves even the stodgiest of cuts. Take “All Right” – it’s all drunken abandon bordering on foolishness, but all is made good, and, indeed, all right by the indelible blistering groove. This gift and the band’s saving grace is more down to intuition as opposed to highly wrought rhythmic craft, but drummer Tim Ferm and bassist Janneck Larsson are brilliant for this very reason – tight, yet at the same time wonderfully spontaneous, encapsulating the best things about a rock rhythm section with swaggering ease.
All those Pantera and RATM albums haven’t gone unnoticed by the band, but the mucky vocals, the minimal melodies, the vagabond lyrical messages, plus overall raw demo quality of this release still make Foobar more punk than metal. Who cares, on the other hand, about distinctions between genres when here is a band with such boisterous sense of fun, such consummately driven riffs and such relentlessly blustering pace to their songs.
You may think it’s all fun and games, but one thing becomes clear after listening to this album. The sense of rhythm and the sense of wellbeing are intimately connected in rock, and writing and spinning a groove isn’t something that you learn at a music school – you are either born with it or you are not.
Label: Reside Records
Online: http://www.foobartheband.com ; http://www.myspace.com/foobartheband
Band:
Anders Karlssonh, guitar
Dennis Brandeby, guitar
Janneck Larsson, bass
Jonny Zasella, vocals
Tim Ferm, drums
Track Listing:
1. My Friend
2. Catch 22
3. 18 Years
4. Revolution
5. Dawning of a Day
6. All About You
7. Communication
8. Queen of Fools
9. Natural
10. All Right
11. Moonshine
Hardrock Haven Rating: 6/10