Benesser
The Start Of Something New

It's almost like we get two albums on the debut album by Benesser. One sounds like a hard rock album and one sounds like something experimental guitar stuff, almost fusion-like. But fusion-like doesn't mean that fusion-thing that was popular in the 70's but a fusion between experimental ideas and guitar stuff. The music is quite unpredictable and ambiguous yet quite far from the progressive rock genre. Somehow this duality explains itself when I read that Benesser has played for 15 year before releasing this album - this surely is a classic case of an album filled with songs written under a long period of time.

'The Start Of Something New' is a nine track big album that takes 47 minutes to play from start to finish. This Janus duality I mentioned earlier is all over the album but not divided in a distinct way between the hard rock-ish traditional stuff and the experimental but it seems to be more of the traditional in the beginning and end of the album and more experimental stuff in the middle. Personally I feel the middle part is the most interesting with the more experimental stuff and my guess is that the experimental fusion has grown by time and not the other way around.

I think the individual performances are subject to great credit because it's not always the easiest things they try to do. The first thing you'll notice will probably be the guitars as they are very noticeable the way they're played but that's not the only great performance on the album. Robert Olsson on vocals is just as impressing with the way he extends the vocal chords this clean and neat. He also makes the most amazing transitions from low to high pitched tones and he also does them flawless when doing just one or the other. The drums stays pretty anonymous but makes a great job taking the music forward despite even being very noticeable. It's an art to play drums well without going too far with it and start showing off, which always compromise the music, but David Olsson does exactly this and for this he earns a huge pile of credit.

Most of this album is played pretty slow but every now and then it takes a turn not only for faster music but also for heavier. One of the most "hard rockish" songs are the concluding title track, a heavy and fast song filled with aggressive solo instruments. The variation is a weapon that this band has and use, and so are the solo performances and that professional touch they leave all over this album. It might be a small arsenal of weapons but I believe it could be a lethal combination, especially when the band has trained up their warfare skills with another album or two.

'The Start Of SOmething New' is definitely an album worth checking out if you like the neatly toned rock music that neither fear to go either slow and play the emotional touch nor the rough and heavy stuff, as well as being fast when it's necessary. This album is 15 years of work worth waiting for.

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